Tag: july 2025

The New Reality of the Course Empire

The New Reality of the Course Empire

Transcript

We are talking about courses.


And as I was putting together the workbook for it, which has about seventeen pages of scattered thoughts, it occurred to me that the reason it feels so scattered is because, the course world is different today than it was a month ago than it was a year ago and definitely than it was five years ago.


So I don’t want to put together a workbook that, is actually not based on what’s really going on right now. So I thought let’s have a discussion about it, because I know there are people in this room who work with course graders who have their own courses, and who are thinking of grading a course and wondering if that’s the right thing to do. So, this is more of a discussion today if that’s cool with y’all. So please bring your best experience, your best ideas, what you know to the conversation, and we can talk about that.


Now the bigger question when people talk about putting a course together, it’s typically a second part of their existing business, which is fair, but it does mean you’re now spread across two different business models, which is tricky. So you’ve got your, you know, service based business. Great. And then you have this other digital product business, which used to be great because you could honestly say, like, we’re just going to sell it in the background and just keep generating passive actual passive, income from it.


And, the passive income is kind of gone now. Not entirely gone, but it’s not what it was. It’s not it’s not at all what it was.


And I think there’s lots of reasons for that. And if anybody has any thoughts and wants to chime in, please feel free to.


But, obviously, there’s a lot of crap out there.


And then there are a lot of good options too, like, really great, strong, well produced options that, yeah, feel different, might not be as great with instruction, but I’m thinking of, you know, the stuff that Coursera puts together, and things like that. I don’t take it, but I know that people in teams in particular do take it, take the stuff over there. It’s also very affordable, compared to what most of us the rest of us do with our thousand to five thousand dollar courses that we put out.


So there’s a lot going on. Right? Anybody Anybody can make a course right now. It’s very difficult to tell if the course is any good or not before you get into it.


It requires a lot.


ChatGPT is our number one referral source right now, for people who buy copy school without having even heard of us before.


So a lot of people have typically come to us from our own ecosystem, and great.


But I’m quite surprised by what ChatGPT is doing for our business. One part destroying it, one part building it. So it’s a weird I’ve got a weird relationship with ChatGPT.


So but all that to say, when you’re thinking of building a course today, just like any content that you’re thinking about today, we are trying to increase our authority service area with LLMs, all the AI world out there, and with Google. So still worrying about search engine optimization, but also worrying about GEO. So all of this this other space where generative AI is telling your next client that they should go with your competitor.


So that’s something that we need to be thinking about when we’re doing everything, but absolutely when we’re putting together a digital product as well. Because the service obviously has a lot of friction to get into it. Right? Do I want to hire you for this versus I have someone on my team who should be doing this work?


Can you just teach them how to do it? And, of course, that’s where your course comes in.


So what does ChatGPT care about when they’re recommending? Because it’s going to be important as you put a course together or whatever your offer is. What do they what does ChatGPT care about? And that means what content should you be putting out where in order to promote your course. So you can see how.


I didn’t even expect, a year ago, of course, to be talking about how courses and ChatGPT are working together right now or how Reddit is a big influencer for ChatGPT or Wikipedia as well. You’re supposed to have a Wikipedia page now. So in order for you to even consider selling a course, you need to already have a stronger authority surface area in place. And then the question is, well, given that courses are very difficult right now to move people on unless they’re really affordable and small.


And typically, we’re hearing also supported by a human. So people still want someone to check-in with all the time. So this passive income thing isn’t what it was because you have to actively participate in running a course now, which you didn’t have have to do for the longest time. So what do we do with that?


Now I wanna bring this to y’all and kind of open the floor before I propose what to do with that.


I wanna open the floor and hear those who have courses.


What’s working, what’s not working for you? If you wanna share it. I don’t see why you wouldn’t wanna share it. But if you don’t, that’s okay. But if you do anybody?


Yeah. I’ll I’ll definitely share. Do you just mean, like, with my course business or what my clients are seeing?


Or Sure. Whatever, like, whatever feels, like, relevant to the idea of how do I build a course today, or should I build a course today? Yeah.


Yeah. Yeah. So what I was seeing kind of last year was well, bay basically, in terms of buying behaviors, I’m seeing that people if people don’t buy now, I think it’s, like, ninety percent. If people don’t buy now, they’re, like, beyond recovery after a month, like, ninety percent of people.


So, people it’s, like, about getting people to make a fast decision, but in order to do that, there’s definitely a price cap. So last year, I was looking at, like, a two thousand dollar price cap, whereas this year, it’s more like twelve hundred. So like if you’re gonna create a digital product I think it needs to be like around the thousand dollar mark, because you need to be able to sell it. Like from the moment people sign up for your webinar, like they’re gonna make a decision very quickly.


And then but you’re not gonna make money really off that. So it would then be if you have a higher ticket offer or a mastermind, to seed that into because people are only seem to really be buying those if they’re either getting on a sales call or they’ve already bought from you already. So that’s kind of how I’m seeing it all work together. So, they my clients that are making the most money have, like, a five thousand dollar offer that they’re selling through, through a call or like a five hundred dollar offer that they’re selling with Day one Evergreen and then that feeds into like a high ticket system.


So, yeah, that’s what I’m seeing. In terms of my own course, like, I’m not really doing much with it, but it is fully passive because it’s five hundred dollars and people just, like, hit me on a podcast or something and buy it. So I’m making, like, two k a month from it, which isn’t great, but, like, it’s nice because I can just put that that, like, high as a social media manager. So yeah.


Cool. Thank you.


Okay. So just to sum up what I’ve heard about the course world, for you is keep prices down lower than they used to be. And if they’re higher, have a sales call.


Yeah. Or if they’re higher, like, make them much higher with a community aspect.


Otherwise, keep it lower, but make sure that it seeds into something higher because, like, especially if you’re running ads. Like, it’s just they don’t stand alone in the way that they used to.


Yeah. Yeah. Nikki?


I just wanted to share share.


Mhmm.


When I was looking for someone to audit my podcast, I saw all sorts of different interesting programs that people were pitching me on and all that kind of thing.


And one interesting model that I saw was this kind of, like, high touch slash do it yourself program where they took the course that they already created and clearly were, like, previously selling for, like, two thousand dollars. And now it was, like, sitting inside this program where it’s now a, like, eight to ten ks program where like there’s like this accountability and like one on one calls but then you’re like handed off like let’s say once a month but you’re handed off to like the content in the courses. So like there’s the accountability because you have to check-in with the calls but there’s also, like, the passive content that, like, you’re not, like, left alone for, like, these one month periods of time. Yeah. So it’s just, like, an interesting model to see.


And then for myself, I was kind of thinking about, like, the community model where you’re kind of filling the room with I mean, I don’t know how to do this, but I was just like, it would be cool and it could work well if you’re filling the room with, like, a lot of smart people that like to share and help each other.


There’s a lot of value in that and then, like, once a month workshops. So, like, it can be low ticket, but also high touch person to person. Mhmm. So I was just thinking about that.


Yeah. And that’s funny because, over the years, we’ve for copy school, when teams have come to us, they rarely buy without having a conversation with us. Like, they don’t even go through our Sam card. Like, it’s just happening, with sales calls and, Stripe invoices. We send them an invoice for the number of seats, etcetera. But they have always wanted what you’re talking about, this hybrid of, yes, we want these on demand programs, but we need a kickoff call. We need check-in calls.


We need goal setting, and we need, like, a timeline with a final call at the end with the option to add on copy reviews and things like that.


So it’s interesting that has been what teams have been looking for for years, but it sounds like you’re saying, Nikki, that’s not just teams. It’s like individuals are expecting to have more of that as well. Is that right? Or was it teams?


That’s what I was saying. Yeah. Like, all these offers now shifting to that. By the way, also, I’ve been running, like, jobs to be done interviews, like, this past two weeks, like trying to figure out my ICP and all that.


And a lot of them were talking about that. Yes.


Like their companies expense these courses and they pay for these seats and like some of them use it, some of them don’t like, but all of them mentioned master class, which I thought was interesting because they were also like they were saying like like it sounded like the previous years were like copy school, CXL, reforge and like now it’s more shifting to like master class and, like, still some of that, but it was just, like, interesting to hear.


Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Thanks. Myrna.


Yeah. I’m gonna look at it from my client’s perspective, because I’ve had two different clients and and who have been in this whole online educational space at volume.


And what worked before is just not working for a couple of reasons. Time.


They just don’t have time to sit down in a course.


And so they need smaller, digestible kind of courses. So some of the courses that are doing really well are the the the faster courses where you’re getting something that’s very real world applicable very quickly.


But if you are in a longer course, I think I’m gonna echo what Nikki said, and it was the the idea of community.


And that’s really lacking in a lot of the the course structures that have been, successful in the past. And, they’re sort of ex they’re expecting access to the expert, a lot of real world applications, demos, tools, whatever they need. Definitely expecting this higher touch with the expert that that isn’t easy to execute always.


And and that’s why I think I’ve seen a resurgence of the membership model or the hybrid membership model when it comes to a course.


Okay. So what does the hybrid membership model look like?


I think it looks more like where you have it’s almost like this a little bit more, right, where you have smaller groups, and you have this ability to interact with the community, but you also have this giant resource library and a and and this back and forth. Mhmm.


And so it’s it’s not exactly what I would call it’s more of like a member a mastermind at scale maybe.


Interesting.


Yeah. And so and then, you know, I think the other thing that especially in the space I’m in, it it’s in this trauma education space.


Everybody’s starting to blend in, and so you really have to have some sort of differentiator and be super clear about that in your messaging because that’s not coming across, and it’s like everything seems to sort of feel like the same thing over and over again. Yeah. Even your own courses are starting to cannibalize other the the your own courses within your own ecosystem.


It’s interesting. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Marna. Mhmm. Abby?


Yeah. Since we it’s kind of removed on to, like, the higher ticket programs, I just wanted to share a model that I’ve been saying seeing working really well because it’s a bit different. And it’s, you basically run an on demand webinar all the time. And then there’s, like, a car open close on the first week of the month, and you have an agency come in for that week, and they take the calls and close for you. So it kind of creates a natural urgency, so you can you can only apply to book a call within that week.


I am thinking about doing it for my own business because it’s, like, cheaper than hiring a full time closer because it’s just for the seven days. But the clients I have who are still doing, like, three hundred k a month with online programs, it is through that model of, like, having having closes. So, yeah, just another thing I’m seeing. Yeah.


Yeah. Cool. Cool. Love. Katie?


No? Katie? Oh, Katie’s frozen.


Yeah. Just to speak to can you hear me? Okay. Sorry. My Internet is being weird. That’s why I’m on my phone.


To speak to, I think, as a buyer, so I told Abby about this already, but I bought a YouTube course well, bought into this YouTube course, but it was also clearly a course that had been turned into this hybrid model. So whereas they were probably selling it for, like, two k before, it was five hundred a month extra months. So I paid fifteen hundred for four months. Yeah.


But I will say, like, it was really tough going. It was very, like, front loaded with theory. So I got really and there was, like, very little engagement in the community and no perceived reason to be on the calls.


So, ultimately, at the end of that, it’s like you walk away without having anything versus like, you know, if you’ve invested in the course, you have still the thing to refer back to at the end.


And having got so little value from it, I didn’t want to keep investing. So I went back to another creator whose work I know and like.


And I have access to her, like, mini course, which has proved significantly more valuable than this, like, over bloated thing. So I think that, like, even from a consumer point of view, there’s so much more value in having that. Like, I don’t want two modules worth of theory. I just want the quickest path to the win that I purchased the course or, like, to the problem I purchased the course to solve. So that’s where That’s curious.


Sorry. I I wonder about that simply because this this race for shortcuts when ChatGPT exists and is, like, a shortcut.


It’s weird that you would hire a course to do what you could hire ChatGPT to do.


So I find that like, it’s weird. Right? Isn’t it weird?


Who would put more money into the course?


But I don’t have to I don’t have to second guess what she’s telling me to do versus what Tati Bhatia is telling me to do. Yeah. Definitely trust.


Also, because it’s a creator. I mean, at least Dharma, like, so I bought a bunch of her other programs. Like, I’ve been in her world for years. So and also so I had access to an older version of this course, and she just redid it.


Mhmm.


So there’s, like, hyper relevance to the content because it was new for twenty twenty five.


Yeah. And so with my own courses, I mean, I had this, like, smattering of workshops on different topics that I’ve held back from promoting in any capacity now because they feel stale, because there’s no mention a of AI in them. I think the only way that they would be remarketable is to go through and provide, like, a chat gbt prompt for each step in the process that I’m outlining, which, by the way, the other YouTube course had also integrated.


Mhmm. Yeah. And what would stop you from doing those prompts? You just don’t want to?


Yeah.


Not, like, not aligned with the market that I wanna be serving now.


Fair. So then you just let that die?


Well, that’s yeah. I mean, I don’t know. That’s the question.


Yeah. It is. I agree. No. I wonder that same thing so often. Okay. Thanks, Katie.


Abby?


Sorry. I’m I love talking about courses in case you can’t tell.


Yeah. So I it was funny because I I had my mastermind earlier, and I was talking about, quick positioning based on mark sophistication.


And this conversation just made me think of something in that because with when you’re looking at the highest levels with sophistication, you talk there’s, like, the community aspect we’ve talked about, but I think there’s also the value aspect. And I wonder if people will start leaning into that more. So, like, as an example, like, you know, like, there’s so many courses around, like, or how to build, like, a seven figure agency, but looking at, like, one specific thing, like, like, using it to, like so you can create jobs for people or just something that’s very value aligned.


So you’re creating a sense of belonging and identity rather than just an outcome. I wonder if that could be, like, the kind of potential future courses is, yeah, identity versus outcome.


Interesting. I’m wondering with all of this, like so the reason to create a course five years ago was, because it was pretty easy money. That was the number one reason people created courses, which is really good, quick money. I my acupuncturist, was performing acupuncture on me and talking about her course.


And I was like, I run a course business. And, like, it was like, her whole everything changed about her. She was so excited to talk about this chorus, and she’s gonna make all this money. Years later, she never stood the course up.


And now now what? Right? Now it’s unlikely to.


So I’m wondering, it does it make good business sense to create a course today?


Abby, you say yes.


Yeah. Like, even just for the authority service area, like you say, I think everyone should have a book, should have a course, should have spoken on ten podcast in five masterminds, have a blog, perhaps the same. Like, it’s just like one of the things on the checkbox. And, plus, you’re still gonna make a little bit of money from it. Even though if you wanna if you wanna make a lot of money from it, you have to make it like a whole arm in your business and hire people to help you with it. But, yeah, I just think it’s a at minimum, it’s a tick At most, like, you can you can still make good money from it. It’s just harder.


And we’re all like this, so it’s easier.


If it’s to part of it is to increase your what Nikki said there too. Right? Part of it is to increase your authority service area.


I wonder then, should it be gated, or should it be on YouTube?


Do you need to sell a course today? If you’re just gonna sell it for five hundred bucks, anyway, you sell for a month in a good month, let’s say, and you’re only selling them because you’re out there increasing the size of your service area, which you could better increase by just putting it out there for free. Couldn’t you?


But then it’s not self liquidating. Like, if you’ve got a course of five hundred dollars and you can run ads to that and then run ads to your YouTube video, then you’re gonna get in front of a lot more people, and more people are gonna take your course testimonial social proof. Like, I just think if you’ve got, yeah, if you’ve got something that’s self liquidating, then you can scale it. Whereas, like, yeah, like YouTube, like, as I think a lot of us have seen, you’ve gotta hide the editors. Like, there’s just so much. Whereas if at least you’re selling a five hundred bucks course, like, that’s gonna fund your editor.


Interesting.


Jess?


I yeah. I just wanted to say, like, what Abby said with having a course up helping to, like, support your authority.


That is something I just like, I’m always thinking of it as, like, a money making venture. And, like, if you don’t see the direct path to, like, making a lot of money from the course itself, and if you don’t have a big list and you are running ads and there’s, like, all this stuff to do to make it make you a lot of money, I like that reframe of, like, it’s just another piece of your, like, authority in addition to having a book and having all this stuff. Like, I think that’s, like, a really helpful thing for me. That was just, like, a little light bulb moment.


Okay. So you’re thinking of it as part of your bigger authority building picture.


I still have a question, and Nikki just popped it in there too. Nikki just said in chat, she had a podcast guest who ungated his course and did the awesome stuff for his business. It was not hosted on YouTube. You still had to opt in for it.


So use this lead gen, which is but this does go back to that question of your business model. And if you’re spread thin across two business models instead of just focusing on the one, am I gonna be an agency slash consultancy or am I going to be a course business? An agency doesn’t need a list. A course business needs a list.


Agency doesn’t need ads. A course business needs ads. So you can quickly see, like, you need two additional skill sets to do the course business. If the payoff is five hundred dollars for a course you sell and while that’s happening, the expectation is you have to make yourself available.


Your hour is worth a thousand bucks as a consultant. The Chorus business has just turned that into two hundred bucks an hour at best. So I’m looking at it as somebody who if the topic of the conversation is building your course empire, is there a way to build a course empire today? Does it make sense to try to build a course empire today?


Or is there a better, smarter way to build a consultancy that is based on, like, we’re talking about here, these authority checkpoints. Like, do you have these things in place? And then my question would be, well, where do you host this course? Because although it’s cool that this person was building was doing lead gen with his course, that does sound a lot like list building just to give away a whole free course versus put it somewhere where people, including ChatGPT, can find it, can parse it, and can say this person’s an authority and send better quality leads who are ready to spend more money to you for services including workshops.


So I want to open the conversation up or at least have some thought around the people who didn’t put courses together, and I’m thinking April Dunford. Bob Mesta did, but he didn’t do much to sell it, with Rewired Group, for jobs to be done.


They have done book, promote the hell out of your book, get on stages, whatever those might be, virtual or real, and drive to high ticket workshop sales so that you can build a five million dollar a year business running twenty workshops a year with bigger ticket clients, and it’s really you plus VA.


You get a lot more money for yourself. You get to buy vacation properties that way. Now it takes a lot, though. It takes a lot. But what I like for those who because if I if I were to start a whole new business today and someone told me what the expectations were around delivering a course and that I can charge a fraction of what people charged three years ago for that same course, and I have to do more for it.


Whereas, I could not do any of that.


I could still create that content, be a teacher, put my thought leadership out there, and sell to sell workshops into larger organizations who love this, sell a mastermind to the smaller smaller sized ICP, so freelancers, other consultancies, and things like that, sell that as well.


Do I need a course outside of for lead generation and authority building? Abby, you wanna hop in?


Yeah. So I can’t I can’t speak to the selling the work workshop. So just there’s just two things I wanted to say is, one, I do think having something to sell makes you a a much better service provider. Like, that doesn’t have to be a course, but I think understanding what it takes to sell a product, having a testing ground, like, a playground is just test things.


It makes you a better business owner. It makes you a better service provider. And, of course, it’s just such an easy one. It’s so easy to have.


Like, we’ve all got IP that we can create a course with.


The second thing is I just think when we’ve been talking about creating, using your course content as lead gen, I think it’s kind of it takes for granted the fact that once somebody’s become a customer, it is so much easier to convert them into a higher paying customer.


Like, I was really shocked when I opened up my mastermind. And, okay, I only made forty k with it, but I did nothing. I did not I posted it up to my email list once. I have less than a thousand people.


Posted on LinkedIn, like, three times, and it was all people that bought my course. Five hundred dollars then paid me five grand to be in my mastermind. And that is a scalable business model, is having a mastermind. And I just think even though I’ve got people that have downloaded all my freebies, watched my webinars, it’s the ones that have given me money that that convert into high ticket.


So I just really think, like, we can’t be taken for granted that if people buy something from you, it doesn’t matter what it is or how much it cost, like, you can make more money from them.


Does a book do that job?


Well, yes. But also, I I found that the peep it was loads of people more people have bought my book. Then of my mastermind, I think there’s nine people in there. Seven of them bought my course, and I’ve made it, like, over three hundred book sales. So, like, a book’s ten dollars. A five hundred dollar course is just it’s different. It’s a bigger commitment mentally.


Yeah. So it sounds like, no. A book doesn’t do the job that a course does when we think about the ladder of getting people. Depends on your audience. Yeah.


I guess it yeah. It it depends. But, like, yeah. If you’re for five thousand, ten thousand dollar mastermind, like, I don’t know. And if your book’s incredible, like, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens with yours.


Awesome. Nikki? Oh, you’re still muted somehow. Thought you just went off mute.


I pressed lower hand instead of mute.


I think what I wanted to say was this is, like, literally what I’m, like, grappling with right now is, like, this this business side versus this course side and, like, building the two different audiences and, like, all my content will be unfocused and all that.


But at the same time, there’s still this fear of, can I really just do one thing? Like, just audits and workshops for teams? Like, that’s crazy. Like, it feels so I don’t know.


I’m not sure the fear is. I don’t think it’s limiting. I don’t think I will be bored. I don’t think like, what’s what’s wrong with just that?


Is it because you’re used to busy hands?


Is you also used to be busy?


Or maybe it’s like the or, like, the opportunity cost.


Like, there are always going to be these people, like, these little mini April Dunfords that wanna be her and wanna learn from her and wanna like, she’s attracting them anyway, so, like, she should just say no to them.


Like Yeah.


Literally, April just says no. And in fact, her fear is creating little mini April Dunfords.


That is she doesn’t want them. She wants no mini April Dunfords out there because it dilutes her brand.


That is such disciplined.


Yeah.


Yeah.


I know. Right? And but that’s even when you say fear, that’s where courage comes from. Right?


It is doing the thing because you’re scared to do it. So have the courage to be a disciplined business owner, and it will mean turning away money. And as I April wouldn’t I don’t think mind me saying it. It’s not like April comes from money.


April doesn’t have an easy time saying no to these things, but she does. She says no. And it just keeps raising her her workshop prices so that she feels better at the end of it all. It’s worked out pretty well.


But it does take work. Yeah. Is it wrong to not wanna do a course, Myrna says? I don’t think so.


I think right now, you have to have a reason to do a course.


You love teaching. You’re building your authority, and this is one more way to do it.


I don’t think the reason can be money, and that was the reason. I don’t think that the empire will be a course empire.


It’ll be your empire, but will it be based on the course?


All the course businesses right now are tanking.


Tanking.


Like, insider insights into what’s going on in huge names.


People are shutting whole things down. They’re having to lay people off. It’s just getting expensive.


Her workshop starts at sixty thousand, April’s, and she typically sells lots. Like, she sells, like, four into Google at a time. So, you know, when you’re doing quarter of a million dollar or three hundred thousand dollar invoices for a few days work, you can see the discipline pays off. Yeah.


Abby?


Yeah. Can I just pose a question to the group? I’m just curious. So one of the ways my buying behavior has changed is because I’m so aware that anyone that’s making the ad to put out of content, AI is scraping that content and helping make them redundant.


So if I’m if I get something out of someone’s free content, like, I’ll buy from them and probably not take the course. I just wanna give them, like, a thousand dollars to just because, like, if they’ve taught me something that’s helped my business, like, they I wanna give them my money. Like, is anyone else thinking like that? And can you see that becoming, like, a not like a movement, but just but kind of, like, more people embracing that?


I think course creators want that to be a movement.


Are there more Abby’s out there?


Was anybody gonna answer that?


Yeah. My opinion is that I don’t I don’t really see that happening, mostly because, you know, people are I I don’t know. I feel like if they’re gonna give money to something, like unless they’re, like, feeling like an activist, you know, like, you know, they want something in return, I guess. I don’t know. To me, I just don’t I don’t see it going in that direction.


It’s like I think, historically, people have bought courses to say, please. Like, please, can I have your content? It’s like, I wonder if they’ll start buying courses today that say thank you because it’s like, I’ve already learned a ton from your YouTube channel. Like, thank you.


Like, the same way of Substack, you might buy someone coffee. I don’t know. It’s like Joe. Like, whatever you put out, I’ll buy it because I just because I’m grateful to you.


Like, I’ll buy it as a thank you whether I need it or not. Like, I don’t know.


I just we’re just curious to see if anyone else has seen that or if it’s just Yeah.


Like, it it might depend on the market too, but I I don’t see a consumer just handing over their cash because they are grateful, you know, at least in the direct shipping space.


A little cash. Right? Like, Patreon. Mhmm. Right? That sort of thing. Yeah.


That’s that’s a little different.


Yeah. Because they’re also getting value. Right? Because they’re I mean, they’re going to maybe participate in that community because Patreon’s like a community driven thing, same with school, something like that. But as far as, like, a course Yeah.


I don’t know. Roxanna?


I was just gonna say exactly what Jess said. I have done that. Mhmm. But thousand. You know, it’s gonna be, like, a couple of hundred because I think they’re great and I love them. For instance, I buy memberships from and for anything from, real finger, Ash Amberjay. You know, I think she’s amazing.


I gave her five hundred just to be in a local community newsletter course that I was never going to start just because I love her. But I don’t think I ever gave more than five hundred for that.


However, while I’ve never had a course, I’ve just did I mean, I’ve always had, like, small courses. I only did them just for lead gen and workshops.


I am grappling with this, and I’m wondering because I started a substack, but now it’s sitting there isolated. I haven’t emailed my list in three months or more.


And I used to, and I people would love my emails and I you know, it would be great. But now I’m rethinking everything and I, quite frankly, I don’t know what to do. April Dunford sounds amazing.


So maybe I should just, like, focus on the book.


And I’m just I’m just thinking what so what do I do?


You know?


So if we could just if I could just walk out of this call thinking, oh my god. Yeah. Forget about Substack. Forget about the email list.


Forget you know, now it’s the book and yeah. And it’s not gonna be a course. That’s okay. You’ve never done it.


You’re not gonna start now. This is kind of my universe of concerns. So there.


And I think that’s fair. Absolutely. What do I do? The challenge is it’s it’s you still do all the things more than ever.


So that’s the problem, is just how hungry the machine is, and it always needs fresh food. You always have to be producing something new or at least telling it that it’s something new, such as taking an old course or old content and putting it into a new environment.


So you do the Substack, and you do YouTube, and you do Reddit, and and and that’s that’s the problem. And we have to get to a place where that’s why you’re doing the right work and thinking through who is my ICP, who’s the persona at my ICP that I want to target, what is my specialization, and what do I bring uniquely to that. Because, otherwise, if you have to create content, if we all have to create content all the time, that’s the job, all the time, ongoing content creation, then you better make sure you’re not wasting your time on talking about headlines when your ICP is never gonna think at that level. They’re never gonna give a crap what you think about a headline, and you could waste a lot of energy coming up with content that doesn’t do anything.


So I don’t think we’ll walk away going here’s exactly what to do next. But what I wanna do is because everybody gets distracted, we all get distracted by all of the options out there. What I wanna do is at least know that people are walking away going, I will do a course, but it’s gonna be this kind of course sold in this location for this amount of money, whether that’s actual places or the amount of money is zero dollars and it’s sold on YouTube or whatever, and you’re doing it strategically for the right people, not not, hey. I wanna make money fast. I’m gonna put a course together.


Because that probably is not the way forward.


So, yeah, it’s not a list of what to do, but, ideally, you can either opt in to making a course or opt out. And once you make a decision as a business owner, you really have to stick by it. So if you say I’m not doing a course, you’re not doing a course. No matter what you hear, no matter who says something to you, seven months from now, you’re not doing a course.


That’s where I want us to land, hopefully. Is anybody thinking of doing a course right now?


Is everybody pretty disheartened by the whole course world right now? Yeah.


But the other options are still there, especially as we move into, you know, this what’s going on with humans in this world kind of question when every all of your clients or people who should be your clients are spending way too much time with ChatGPT, that’s where more of you in front of them goes a long way, which can look like a course, honestly, or it can look like a workshop or just more time spent on YouTube. But I don’t know. I feel like it’s kind of liberating to say, okay. Good. I’m gonna remove that as an option for a product I can create.


It’s not gonna be my it’s not gonna distract me anymore. But I know people wanna connect with me because among many other reasons, they’re they’re disconnected in life, they’re disconnected from the work that I do that I can help them do better. So I’m the human who comes in and helps them with this stuff. So there’s still something there. It’s just is it a course or not. Nikki says, what about digital products? Nikki, what other digital products?


Well, if if, like, we aren’t building a list to talk to the course people and building this, like, ladder of mastermind and course and all that, and I’m going down the wrongs instead of up the wrongs, it it probably doesn’t make sense to even build any digital products because then you’re just not gonna make enough money on them.


Well, what are the other digital products? Because, like, an ebook is a digital product.


Yeah. Playbooks and ebooks and packets and all that kind of stuff.


Why would those be bad?


Because, like, all the list building effort doesn’t pay off. Like, that’s what I have right now. Like, I finally launched a course and then just, like, let it sort of die.


And it never and it was never, like, a proper funnel that, like, really made, like, good customer lifetime value. Like, they just kind of, like, you know, every so often sales, like, I feel like you need that, like, proper funnel to really make it worth the time.


Yeah. It’s true. And that’s the two business models.


You’re spread thin unless you have a lot of money.


Like, I I have had the two business models running side by side, and it was great. But it was also when courses were selling without any effort. Like, nothing. So that world doesn’t exist.


It doesn’t exist like it did. That doesn’t mean someone won’t come out with a really great course and a bunch of people buy it. Sure. That’ll still happen if it’s for the right thing at the right time, etcetera.


So if you think you’ve got the right thing at the right time, don’t let this dissuade you because you can still do it. It’s just you have to be motivated by that thing, not I’ve got this knowledge. Let me make some extra cash on the side with this course. But I think also that these other smaller peripheral items you’re talking about, like SOPs, let’s say, because those were so popular to sell two years ago.


Those little documents, even templates, templates that you can teach them to share with CHAPPGPT or Claude in order to write emails with them, that could still work great. It’s low ticket. It is a way to say, hey, Nikki. I love your podcast. I’m gonna buy these templates from you, and whatever that might be. And it’s easier for you to create too. But the the the bar for courses is getting higher and higher and higher.


You have to hire when you think about the production of a course and what it takes.


These are twenty, thirty, forty, and more thousand dollar investments that you have to make in producing that course. Not so for a PDF, not generated by AI necessarily, but, in the vicinity.


Abby?


Yeah. I just wanted to just say something inspiring in the favor of courses because I think there’s this whole class of course creators who, like, followed the product launch formula in twenty twenty and made millions, and now they’re, like, jaded because it’s not like that anymore. Yes.


But I’m still seeing people make it like, I I’m working with a weight loss coach. She has a five thousand dollar program, and she’s making, like, two hundred k a month from it. And it’s like, people just buying a Zen Pick. Like, a Zen Pick is what ChatGPT is for marketers, and people are still buying it. And it’s because she’s doing it through YouTube. Like, the clients that I have that are absolutely crushing it are just doing it through YouTube, but they’re still they’re still making millions from courses. It’s just not through the product launch formula.


Yeah. Also, you need to post that. Chat GPT is to marketing, what those emphases to weight loss.


Yeah. But Oh, I hear that. It’s fair.


Yeah. I just don’t want if, like, if anybody’s in here and it’s like, oh, I really wanted to create a course, and now I just feel like there’s no point. Like, I just I I think if you want to, like, you can make it work, and it can be really fun. Like, trying to make it work. Like, don’t listen to the course creators who are just, like, bitter now.


I’m not bitter. I am so.


However, being I think it’s important when I look around at what freelancers can waste their time on, this is a thing they can waste their time on.


It’s it’s diff if everybody was raising their rates and charging what they should and working on lead gen and getting good leads coming in, And if everybody was in a place where they were like, okay. I’m building a million dollar consultancy. By this time next year, I’ll have generated seven figures.


I’ll have my team of four full timers in place. I have a good pipeline that I’m constantly working to actually convert. I’m good.


Okay.


Now you have more of the luxury of, okay. How do I expand this? What else do I do? And you can start putting out a course that you can dedicate your time to, but that’s not the case for the vast majority of people in this room.


That’s not where they are yet. When they get there, we’ll have that conversation. First, get your book out the door, get those leads coming in, raise your rates, have all that stuff in place. The course is a distraction.


And I stand by that. It’s got nothing to do with bidder.


Unless it makes you happy. If it makes you happy, then it’s like it adds something to your life as well. There’s that as well.


Next, Cody. Just kidding. Cody, you’re up.


Okay. So I put this in the chat, but I think it’s important for people to actually hear it too.


Well, before making a course, I think it’s important that we think about who it is that we’re who our ICP is, because for me, it doesn’t make sense. If I’m targeting companies that are doing, you know, at least twenty million dollars a year, CMOs, the CMO doesn’t care about how to write an advertorial. They wanna hire somebody to do that. You know?


So, I think it’s important that we just think about who it is that we’re targeting before we go off and create something like that. Agreed. Totally. Thanks, Cody.


Jess?


I did wanna make a note before my actual point is Jeff Walker is currently launching product launch formula, and I’m so curious as to see, like, if he’s, like, updated it or, you know, if he’s changed, like, anything, since twenty twenty. I’m just, like, really curious to see that. I hope not.


I hope that we still see him in his, like, Colorado cabin. Like, all exactly the same video sales letter. I love that.


Yeah. I’m yeah. I’m really curious to see what he does. But one thing I think that has been coming up for me is, like, I just watched, is his name Ramley? Ramley John launch his new book, and he had this, like, whole hoopla where I got like, I bought it because I was like, well, I need to know what’s in your book.


But then I got a course and access to all this stuff. And even when, there was somebody I think I asked Jessica if she helped produce this woman’s book Talia Wolf.


And it feels like people who are launching books, it’s like they’re already in such an established place that they when they launch, they have so many people sharing it and they have all this stuff around it. So each time I hear, like, write your book, produce your book, like, put out this book, it also feels like, okay. But now the the expectation is to also do a course and to also have these templates with it and to also have this and to have this upsell and and etcetera etcetera. So yeah.


Okay. So I wanna pause on that because that’s just marketing at play. Right? You don’t know what Talia’s business is like.


You don’t know what Rolleby’s business is like. You just know what they’re projecting, and that’s all anybody will know about you as well. So I would I would throw that right the hell out. Just don’t let it enter your mind.


Yes. To the takeaway of okay. Cool. So you have to have, like, great marketing around what you’re doing, and it can be helpful to have a course to sell into, to sell people into when they buy your book.


But everything else is it’s it’s a mask. It’s a thing that’s been created to make them look bigger and more badass. Not that they’re not. I’m not saying that.


Mhmm.


But I I wouldn’t I wouldn’t let that in for a second.


All it takes is marketing, and you’re a marketer.


You can do this.


Yeah. And I started watching Ramley’s course, and I’m, like, halfway through it. And I was like, it’s it actually kinda did me a favor where I was watching it, and I was like, there’s not a thing in here that I don’t already know. Like, I could put this out.


Yeah. You know? And, like, I’m still waiting for my hardcover to be delivered and maybe because I’m in Canada. That’s not why that’s why I haven’t got it yet.


But, yeah, I was just like, oh, there’s, like, not some secret thing in here that, like, I don’t know.


No.


Exactly. Yeah.


So most people are putting out. Also, when it’s published by a publisher, the publisher is attracted to those higher level things, not the more detailed things.


So that’s what we’ll often see from publishers versus self published, which is gonna be typically more useful, unless about a really great title that, you know, gets everybody to buy the book and nobody reads the thing.


So hundred percent. That’s why I keep saying write the freaking book. Yeah. It’s not it’s not because I think you’re not qualified.


It’s because I think you are. So go fucking do it now. Like, just sit down and do it. Workblocks, do it.


Yeah. I’ve been try I’m trying to watch that video of Jessica’s when she came into Yeah. CSP. Is it up now?


Because oh, perfect. Friday. Yeah. Oh, amazing. I can’t wait to watch it.


Okay. Good. Sweet. Now we’re talking about Hormozi. Abby, you little shit disturber over there. Alright. Nikki?


Hi. Sorry.


First of all, that by the way, that’s, like, my biggest fear about writing a book is that I’m gonna be one of those, like, useless authors that write something that everybody knows. Like, I don’t wanna do that.


Don’t do it.


That’s but then I’m, like, spinning my wheel. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Different different conversation.


So my my biggest question here is if like, back to what Cody was saying of, like, my ICP will not buy my course. So then why are they opting into any of my content? Like, they’re not gonna listen to my podcast either. They’re not gonna read my book either.


On your thank you page. Why what are you asking them when they are on the confirmation page?


Excuse me. Moment led you to it?


Yeah.


What was going on in your life that brought you to blank today?


How else are you gonna know? And that’s when they can tell you. You already know what to do. You’re just not doing it.


But Not and universally.


Just in What?


What’s that? I just missed what you said.


Oh, I said not universally, but just in that case, you’re not doing it. But go ahead.


Listening to my podcast, maybe as, like, an authority piece of, like, oh, I listened to it because ChatSpy told me that I should fire you. So I listened to it to, like, check that you know what you’re talking about, but they’re not actually my audience.


The people who are listening to your podcast are not actually your audience, or who is signing up is not actually your audience? How do you know?


I feel like the people listening are marketers doing the work.


Like, they are that before you know.


Still like Mhmm. Not Do do do VPs of marketing listen to, like, nitty gritty email strategy? Why? They’re not doing the work.


Some of them are.


Some of them absolutely, tragically, are right now because their teams have been cut in half, and they’re trying to create GPTs to replace those teams. And they can’t. And while we’re on the subject, all of these companies that have cut their staff in half, they still have freelancer budget. They’re just not allowed to hire.


So it is a good time to get out there for those VPs and put yourself in front of them because they don’t have the same team members they used to have. So consider that. But if you don’t think your ICP is listening to a podcast, do you have the podcast because you’ve had the podcast and your old audience is no longer the audience going forward? And if that’s the case and you don’t believe your new or current ICP listens to a podcast or your podcast or podcast in general, then why would you put your effort into it?


So I was thinking that I need to majorly change it. However, I still don’t think I have enough to say. Like, my expertise is not what they want to listen to day in, day out. They wanna hire me to do the thing.


Like, they want my expertise, but they don’t want me teaching it to them. They just want me doing it. What they wanna talk what they wanna, like, listen to a podcast on is something totally different. I don’t know.


Managing people and I don’t know. I don’t know what managers care about. I should know better.


I think that that was so I would say that that was somewhat true. But all along, every that’s all stages are for when these people and VPs do go to conferences, and they sit in the audience and they take notes. And usually sure. They might not be taking notes for what they’re gonna do, but they’re saying, oh, hire Nikki to come in and do x. And that’s their takeaway on their little notepad, and then they go back and they do that when they’re back in the office.


So don’t I, there’s the the struggle between, like, okay. We have to figure out what to work on. Right? What to work on now.


You have a podcast.


Consistency pays off better than hopping around fifteen different things. So just keep doing the podcast. Mhmm. Keep doing it.


Keep plugging away at it. Never stop doing it. You can change what it’s about. You can, like, move around and do different things, but keep doing it and then add in your book.


And you’ve got now this stronger authority surface area, and then you have figured out on your website what you’re selling. Do you have a mastermind for the people who listen to your podcast and want to be like you and do what you do? Do you have a workshop for the people who have a team already and they just want you to come in and teach that team? And do you have done for you services?


Which, like, all of that is a really standard, nice view of a business. All the front end stuff, all the back end stuff.


Yeah. I I yeah. If you think that your ICP is not listening to your podcast and you do some research and you find that they’re not and all the wrong people are, that doesn’t mean you have to give up your podcast. I would just consider changing it. Try something different on it instead.


Katie?


So you think they do listen to tactics?


Yes. I know that they do.


April’s book is ten steps to position your product, and it’s it’s the CEOs of large organizations are reading reading it. We think that they’re all caught up in strategy and all up here all the time.


But do you know how many leaders are frustrated by the doers on their team? And they’re like, what do my doers not know? And so they go and they look for the book that they can hand to their team and say this. Do it this way now, you guys. That’s where you come in. That’s where your content comes in.


Gotcha. Word. Cool.


Abby’s over there printing slogans. Alright.


Katie, you’re up. What’s up?


What are you thinking?


Okay. So just question on what you just said before my actual question. You said the business model would be, like, mastermind for people who wanna know what you know, do it themselves.


Yeah. Workshop for teams, and then done for you services.


In that sense, your the workshop for teams is training the internal team so that they could do what you would advise them to do.


Training is not facilitating. Yeah. So it doesn’t have to be training. You don’t have to come in and say, here’s what the exercise.


It depends. Right? So it depends on what they’re looking to do. And I think that the easier win, especially if you’re trying to get their team to a better place with what you’re training them on, is thinking of it as facilitation.


So they have some prework to do, then they have the workshop with you. Then there’s homework. It’s usually, like, let’s talk about, like, a two day workshop. Day one, six hours of going through and facilitating the thinking part, getting them so that they can go do homework.


You also go do some homework. You come back the next day, and together, you get to the outcome that the workshop was set up for, which requires that you really run a tight workshop because you can’t do that much with thirty people in the room.


So, yeah, that’s that’s so it’s a question of do you train in that time? Depends. I would know Minimum. But rather help them come to the right answers by giving them frameworks and listening and talking them through it, which they seem to like more in my experience.


Okay.


Okay. Thank you. That’s fine. I I did just finish, forget the model, so I can see how that translates to what they because they call themselves facilitators, so I can see that.


Yeah. April facilitator as well.


Go ahead. Sorry. My question is around, kind of what Cody and Abby were discussing in chat around, like, the workshop as paid consult.


And sorry. I just realized that. I was like, well, I have my diagnostic funnel set up, but it’s kind of, like, potentially gonna be irrelevant. But, like, the idea of having the diagnostic as a paid low ticket offer, I feel like we talked about this a while ago, and you said you were concerned that adding that friction of the payment just means that fewer people will see it.


But I wonder and, like, maybe a question for you slash the room, but, like, whether that because, basically, when I think about doing it, like, a pay any kind of low ticket paid training, the only thing I wanna teach is, like, my diagnostic funnel. But then I think it’s kind of weird to have the same content out there where one is free and one is paid.


Do we like, if you’re dealing with B2C SaaS, is there any point of having that, like, thirty seven dollar offer, or are you just focusing you’re like, just do the book. Ignore the product the shiny products.


Yeah. I’d I’d keep it pretty tight, and within the realm of what they expect.


So they expect a book. There’s probably they’re you’re up against someone who has a book, typically.


And as long as you have a book, self published or not, doesn’t matter. You’ve got the book. They can read it. They can hand the PDF around. They can upload the PDF to chat gbt, sadly, etcetera. So just have a book and then have a workshop and then have, if you want, done for you services. I wouldn’t put anything else in there that is paid because why?


Unless you thought the thirty seven dollar sale is that tripwire that gets them ready to buy more from you, but I see that less as less relevant for the kinds of SaaS brands that should be hiring you. So Brian from SamCart doesn’t need the tripwire experience. In fact, these are people who are more likely to say, look. I know I know what you’re doing.


I know what this is. Like, cool. So you’ve got a tripwire. Awesome. Can we just skip ahead to the part where I hire you to come do this stuff with us?


And they’ll reach out to you by email with that. So just, like, pull out all the distraction.


Focus only on like, if you think about even your global nav on your site, book, services, about, and that’s really it. So they go to the book, then they see the services. It’s a single page. Basically, it’s all about reaching out to you anyway with some ideas of what you can work on together. And you’ve got your lead gen in there wherever it is that has the diagnostic, and that could be a retargeting sort of thing. But the point is you’re keeping it really tight, so that they’re not distracted by all the bells and whistles.


Yeah.


For SaaS, at least.


K. Thank you. Sure.


Yeah. Abby?


Alright. Sorry. Sorry, Abby. Before you go, Katie, you put that out to the group too. Did anybody else wanna offer anything in addition to that?


No? Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Abby.


Well, first of all, thank you all for indulging me or at least going off camera to roll your eyes when I start talking again.


Yeah. I just wanted to say one one more thing. Unexpected benefit I’ve seen from creating a course and writing a book is to do something big like that. Like, you have to be so clear on your big idea, and it just makes everything else, like, so much easier.


Because before I would just, like, my LinkedIn strategy, I was just, like, putting up Paris and it was just, like, I don’t know. And nothing was really doing working, but because I like, in writing the book, it was like I had to get so clear on that. And now content’s just so easy. It’s like I I have like a little a thing I teach called, like, the take the cake method.


It’s like you wanna, like, bake a cake, which is the big thing because then that feeds, like, your wedge, your slice, and your crumbs. Whereas if you’re just putting out crumbs, like, it’s such a waste of time. But bake it, and then the crumbs just, like, take care of themselves. So that’s, like, in favor like, I think a book is the best one to do, but even, like, a course, it’s just it feeds all your other content, and it feels like a ten x move rather than just the constant, like, feeding the machine.


Yeah. I love that. I like take the cake too.


It’s a neat visual.


And I do think that, for me, I know that in writing this book that I’ve just written, writing the the pitch for the book, really forces you to clarify who you’re targeting, why they should love you, like, all of the things that you need in order to get there. So we don’t just write a book so that we have the product. We write a book so we know what we think and who we’re going after, who we’re there to help. So it’s the whole process of it.


Plus the outcome is now you’ve got a book.

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

 

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

Transforming Money into Wealth

Transforming Money Into Wealth

Transcript

I’m Acquania. I’m Acquania Escarne, and, glad to be here today. I’ve been in the community a few months now and, like to write.


So, I’ll talk about my multifaceted business, but I I started writing, blog writing, in like twenty sixteen and, you know, got my first thing off of Upwork and was initially only doing blogs and, articles for online magazine. But in twenty twenty, one of my clients asked me to help promote his ebook and digital sales and COVID were insane. So, that was my first client and he went from a six figure business to a seven, eight figure business. And, we still work together, and he referred me to all his friends. So I’ve actually built a, email marketing business with no website, no direct promotion to my email marketing services, but referral only.


Diverse Ventures: Life Insurance and Real Estate

And, in addition to that, I am a licensed life insurance producer and a real estate investor.


So, in twenty twenty, I also started investing in hotels and other types of real estate. So I’m gonna share a lot of that today, and, I started doing it with life insurance. So that is the beginning of what I’m about to talk about. So I’m gonna share my screen and then hop into this. And I like I said, I’ll leave time for questions because really, telling my story, helps people a lot because how you do it can vary slightly depending on where you are and what you have in your portfolio.


But money is money and money makes money. That’s my goal. Right? So let me minimize me, and you can always, you know, interrupt me while I’m talking, because I’d rather answer questions in real time.


Okay? So today, we’re gonna focus on how to invest in real estate with life insurance, but I’ll tell you all the types of real estate that I’m into and how I’ve made that work. My name is Aquania Esquane. I’m a mom, a wife, and an average traveler.


Before I did all of these things, I was a diplomat for the US government and, straight out of undergrad I went into grad school and then into the foreign service, so I’ve lived in many countries. My youngest was born in Dubai and I’ve also worked on foreign policy and U. S.


Issues. But that’s where I kinda started to put together all of these strategies on how to help people make money because when I was in Port au Prince, Haiti, they had an earthquake, and I saw how a lot of mid income to high income government workers were actually not prepared for disasters. And that’s what got me to encourage people to save money for emergencies and then also to take my finances even more seriously. Fortunately, when I went to Haiti, I had life insurance already, and I was already building the strategy that helped me do what I did in twenty twenty and beyond, but it started my desire to teach people how to do it too.


So it’s funny how crazy natural disasters will also make you reevaluate, your priorities and your focus.


Okay.


So, I started my journey on financial literacy with Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.


I know many of you may have heard about this book. If you have not, feel free to add it to your read list. It is a classic. My dad gave it to me at sixteen, sixteen, which is about the same time I took this picture and I read it. I read it in high school and I literally took to heart what he said and I started saving from retirement at sixteen with my first job.


Early Financial Habits and Retirement Savings

I worked at a clothing store as a cashier and a sales associate. And instead of using my paycheck to buy clothes in the store, I used my paycheck to start saving for retirement.


So I opened a Roth individual retirement account, which is a tax free or tax deferred account where you put money in after you pay taxes, and you get to take it out in retirement tax free. That was my first introduction to saving for my future.


And I’ve actually been able to leverage that one account to help me buy my first home. It also has been, very useful in emergency funds and even, just teaching other people, including my children, on how you can save tax free dollars for your future. So it’s never too early to teach your kids about money because they might listen and it might actually pay off for everybody because now I’ve been able to use some of the wealth I built to bless my family and to, you know, have amazing experiences for us. And so I highly recommend you start early.


Purchasing Properties for Financial Freedom

Okay. So this is me and my husband in twenty sixteen.


When we purchased our dream home in Virginia, we also purchased two other properties in that one year. So that’s the year that we really got on the path to financial freedom.


And the reason I say that is because most people can’t buy three properties in one year unless they, really plan or have just a lot of money. We actually did both. We, first being in the foreign service, as I mentioned, I was assigned to Dubai in twenty twelve, and I took my family with me. And those years while we were assigned overseas, we were also turned into forced landlords, because my husband purchased the condo he had at the top of the market in two thousand and eight, and then he was underwater in twenty twelve. So we weren’t in a position to sell the house, so we had to rent it.


But what I did was leverage my government benefit. So the US government paid for my housing in Dubai and a tenant paid our housing in Maryland. So we let the tenant pay the mortgage for the three years we were abroad and we we saved that mortgage payment, right, in a bank and invested it. So when we came back in twenty fifteen, we decided to make a plan for the money we’d save and the money we built, not just in life insurance because I’ll explain how I built up cash and life insurance, but also the money we saved for three years not paying a mortgage, and things that we had earned off of other investments.


My husband and I got a financial advisor the year before we got married so we could really work with another person to combine our money. And that person gave us a lot of these strategies that we were able to just set and then let work, right? So in twenty sixteen, we purchased our home. We actually helped my mother-in-law purchase a condo so that she could retire in her own home versus paying rent.


Strategies for Real Estate Investment

And then we also purchased a home in Philadelphia where we turned it into a rental and it created rental income for us. And the source of all of that money was mostly life insurance and then, the savings from not paying a mortgage. So there are definitely ways to leverage money and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. But before I move on, do I have any questions?


I have things in the chat. Oh, yes. Yes. Glory days was definitely COVID when people just paid money for no reason.


So here’s how investing with life insurance works. But I’ll also give you some tips on how you can do this same strategy with retirement assets too, because now I have literally leveraged retirement assets, life insurance, and my own cash to do all kinds of deals.


Okay. So whenever you wanna do something, you need money to do it. I’m sorry to say I’m not gonna tell you today that you can do all of these things with other people’s money. That is just not my mantra nor is it realistic. You need some capital. It preferably a little bit of your own because when you have skin in the game, you take it more seriously.


You can create capital by raising money. I’ve also done that.


One of the things I did last year was raise a million dollars in six weeks of other people’s money to purchase a hotel, but that was something I did years later after really fine tuning my own money and how I used it.


So in the world of life insurance, just so we’re on the same definition of what it is, I wanna be clear that it is a contract.


The Basics of Life Insurance Contracts

And in the in the US, we really take this contract seriously.


You sign a contract with a company, you have agreed that God forbid you die, they are going to pay, and it’s a tax free benefit. So your your estate doesn’t pay any taxes on the money you leave them in life insurance.


But one thing that that people don’t always know is that you can use some of the benefits of life insurance while you’re alive. So that’s really what I did is I honed in on that benefit, and I ran with it.


So in my opinion, life insurance is a guaranteed way to leave a legacy because there are two things guaranteed in life, and you guys know what those are? Do y’all have this joke? Because yes.


Two things guaranteed in life. If you know what they are, drop them in the chat. Yes. You got it. Death and taxes. So that’s why I say as long as you have a contract in place before you die, they are gonna pay out, and that’s what makes it guaranteed. But there are there is some fine print to it, and I’ll kinda hop into that quickly right now.


Types of Life Insurance Explained

So, of course, life insurance, there’s different types everywhere, and and which one you get matters, because they don’t all allow you to do the strategy I’m about to talk about. But, being healthy, of course, being young, the type of insurance you get, and your criminal history and medical history all matter. They contribute to what the cost of this strategy is going to be for you, so that’s why I kind of want to highlight that first and foremost.


And we also have what we call term insurance which is like temporary contracts and they cover you for a certain amount of time like ten, fifteen, twenty years. And then we have permanent life insurance which is never expires.


It is more expensive but that’s where the money is, right?


So if you have access to these types of products, this is where you really want to kind of do the comparison and then see what’s best for you because I will say this strategy is not for everyone. It worked really well for me, my family, and a lot of my clients, but it’s important to kinda talk to someone to see if it’ll work for you too.


Alright. So term insurance, as I mentioned, it is temporary. It’s a a contract that expires, but it is still worth having in place if you don’t have anything else. And most employers kinda offer this as well. So, like, if you have an employer or you’re, you know, an entrepreneur who also has a nine to five, your employer might offer an a benefit where they provide life insurance to you or they provide it at a reduced cost. And a lot of times, that’s term insurance that just renews every year.


But the thing about this type of insurance, although it’s good to have and definitely the one that is the best bang for your buck, it also statistically doesn’t get paid out.


So it’s not the one that a lot of wealthier people use because it’s not meant for the purpose of building wealth. It’s meant for the purpose of leaving wealth. So I definitely think if you are limited on income and you wanna just make sure your family’s taken care of, term insurance is definitely the way to go because that will leave the wealth that your family needs to continue to live the life that you’ve built. And, unfortunately, I have had clients pass away, and this has been a lifesaver for their families, but it has also allowed their families to set themselves up for success after their death because they had money and didn’t have to worry about paying bills while they were grieving. So it’s still worth considering.


But, it does have its pros and cons being that it’s budget friendly. You can get a million dollars for, you know, an inexpensive price if you’re young, healthy, and not smoker not a smoker.


But, it is something that expires. Right? So that’s kinda one of the cons. You gotta keep up with it.


You gotta make sure you know when it’s gonna expire. You have to make sure that, you know what your contract says. And then, unfortunately, most people will never see the money because they live beyond the contract, which is a good thing. Right?


It’s good that you live a long life, but most people will outlive their contract. So these don’t get paid out that often, but they are still good to have in place as a backup.


Now the one that I leverage to start my wealth journey is permanent insurance. So one thing I will say is this is guaranteed to be paid out because it doesn’t have an expiration date. As long as you pay the the premium, according to whatever your contract says, they will pay your family.


They will also even pay you. So I’ll talk about how you can earn interest in these types of accounts.


And I know they do have these in Canada too. They just might have them under different names.


But the reason that I particularly like them is because these have been proven to build cash even in low or not as well performing economies and they are also, some of them are not directly invested in the stock market. So you have a type of product that’s not susceptible to the volatility of the stock market. So that’s what I also like and it is a good thing to have in addition to, so let me be clear, in addition to your other investments retirement accounts, it is very helpful to have some type of permanent insurance, if your budget will allow.


Now, there’s different types. I will briefly go into these, but I will say check where you are because it varies.


But you have some types of policies where guaranteed coverage for life, guaranteed price for the time of your contract.


But some of them make more money than others. And so like for example, in the US whole life insurance is the one that we know the most because it’s the oldest product on the market. So a lot of people will refer to their insurance as Whole Life even if it isn’t. But the reality is that this one is more conservative, so it doesn’t always make as much money as the product that I use, which is Index Universal Life. So I really like this one because it’s flexible.


It allows you to change what you pay based on your budget and your circumstances.


It also tends to have a higher return than some of the other policies. But again, it can come with, the the changes. It could be zero percent some seasons when the economy is really bad and then twelve, fifteen percent return when the economy is really good. But the goal is to go for what you’re most comfortable with because you never wanna take on more risk than you can handle. Okay?


But, do you guys have insurance? This is just a quick check with the group. Does anyone have insurance? Drop in the chat yes or no. And then if you do have insurance, do you know what type?


Okay. So we got a yes. We got a no. No. Okay. Alright. I’d love to get to say yes.


So here’s the thing. It’s it’s it’s yes but no type. So definitely look at your contract.


From this point forward, I’m gonna be focusing on the permanent one I talked about that makes money.


But I can answer questions about any type of insurance you have if you genuinely have questions. Okay?


But the key with the permanent insurance is because it doesn’t expire, and you’re paying more for it, the life insurance companies kinda give you some perks for hanging out with them and using their product. And one of the perks is interest. So they’re paying you interest after the first twelve months and every quarter after that based on how well their money does in the stock market. So the key to this strategy though is giving your money time to grow. So for example, my husband and I got policies the year before we got married, but then we gave them two to three years to grow before we cashed in forty thousand dollars to start our real estate investing.


Building Cash Value in Life Insurance

What we used was called cash value. So that’s the money that’s inside of the policy that grows over time. That’s part of that money is money we put in the policy and part of that money is the interest that the insurance company paid us to. Okay? So that’s where you get the capital. And then once you have accumulated enough capital, to to spend, that’s when you start to look for opportunities to leverage.


I like them. Thank you. I actually did this for myself, and I was, like, trying to get creative. So thank you.


So that’s what we’re gonna really focus on is, like, building the cash. So the cash, which is super important, comes from your payments. So every time you make a payment on your life insurance, a portion of it is going to go into a cash bucket, and a portion of it is gonna go to the actual cost of life insurance because it’s a life insurance product. So you are paying a cost for if you die, they’re gonna write the big check. Right?


But the part of your money that goes into the cash bucket is what’s gonna accumulate every month you make a payment. And then after your first twelve months, you start to get interest.


And that interest varies.


It really depends on how well the life insurance companies investments did. So I’m not sure if you guys know this, but life insurance companies don’t just sell life insurance. They actually invest in businesses, invest their money in the stock market, and then they use those profits to pay out their claims, right, and to make money.


So they are the people who are investing in the stock market, but your actual policy isn’t invested in the market.


So that’s why I like it because you don’t deal with the volatility and it makes it different from your other investments. Right? Your retirement investments might be in the stock market, but your life insurance doesn’t have to be. So I like that too.


But after the twelve months, they look at how well they did. If they made a twenty percent return on their investments, they split that with you and all the other people who also have permanent insurance. And on average, the company that I have policies with, they pay between ten to twelve percent since COVID. So just imagine you are paying for something that is gonna give your family money if you die, but in the meantime, you’re also gonna earn a ten percent return every year. I don’t think that’s too shabby.


But that ten percent grows. And if the life insurance company continues to be profitable when they invest, then you will continue to earn interest.


But here’s the catch.


On the month on the quarters, they don’t make any profit. So just imagine two thousand and eight, market’s down, real estate’s down, nobody’s making money. The life insurance companies lost money too. So in those quarters that they don’t make as much money or any money, you don’t earn any interest. But the the the deposits that you made and put into your cash bucket that the interest is paid off of, those will continue to accumulate. So your cash bucket is always making, deposits or getting deposits from the payments that you make, but the interest fluctuates based on the life insurance and what they pay out.


So I like it for that reason too too, because your cash value just doesn’t have the potential to decrease. It only has the potential to increase with the interest payments.


But, and if you make a reduction, meaning a withdrawal, then it will decrease that way, but it doesn’t decrease otherwise.


Utilizing Cash Value as a Savings Tool

So I call this like my second savings account.


And when you let the cash value just grow, then you can utilize it. But I still recommend you use your cash value while you’re alive because the death benefit goes to your family. The cash value is meant to be used by you and that’s what we did. So my husband and I, we had accumulated forty ks in cash value. We decided, hey, we wanna kinda stretch this out over three investments and see what happens. So we, use that money towards down payments on the real estate ventures and the money towards mom and the money in the house in Philly.


And then we funded those deals. And so you have to find the opportunity.


In twenty twenty, I actually found a lot of opportunities, believe it or not, because when everyone’s sitting at home, you have tons of classes to learn how to do tons of stuff.


So, in addition to learning how to take my cash value and put it into physical real estate that I knew how to do, which is buy homes and buy rentals, I also learned in twenty twenty that, hey, for twenty that twenty to twenty five thousand dollars you can also invest in hotels and your money can buy hotels and also give you profits from hotels if you’re an investor.


So in twenty twenty, I took some of my retirement funds and actually invested in my first hotel in Oklahoma and then, kinda got addicted and started investing in hotels every year after that. And so, what I will say is COVID was the best time to get into hotels because they were all on sale. You had owners who were multiple owners trying to make mortgages and struggling to do so because travel was down. And so they were literally giving away hotels for a discount, for taking over mortgage payments, whatever that bank needed to do in order to not have that property foreclosed was what you were able to do to take it over.


And the reason I really like hotels is because you’re not just buying the land, you’re also buying a business. So when you buy the hotel, you are buying a business that rents rooms, sells food sometimes, and then also has a land value as well.


So that’s what we I did in twenty twenty. Purchased real estate, including hotels, and those businesses, then started to pay me, in twenty twenty one.


So I borrowed.


I lended myself the money, basically.


And then I found the deal and then I literally, rinse and repeat.


So a lot of these properties I still have. I even started getting into apartment syndication. So for anyone who’s ever lived in a big apartment subdivision, most of the time those are owned by corporations or by LLCs who have investors in them. And so I chose to use my money, retirement money, life insurance money, and our cash to do those types of deals.


And so invested and repeated. And then since then, some of them have sold. So for example, the apartments that we had near Disney World in Florida, we sold those in twenty twenty three. And then, the the hotels I’m actually still invested in and, seeing how those go, and they’re pretty much doing well now that we’re out of COVID.


Exploring Case Studies in Insurance Funding

Okay. So before I get into case studies, I just wanna check to see, do we have any questions for the Canadians here, cash value, whole life, etcetera, all things here. Yes. Yes.


I’ve I’ve presented to a group in Canada before, and they told me the same thing, but I just wanted to to make sure. Okay. So I will say that it does take money to make money, but how much money you put into insurance is up to you.


Oh, that’s a good question. So, Katie, I invested directly into the hotels through private equity deals, and now I am a hotel owner myself. So when people invested with me in twenty twenty four, they sent me and my partner’s money and we purchased the hotel directly. And then they’re paid out, cash flow from the hotel profits directly from us as well. You can do funds like real estate investment trust and stuff.


But there just aren’t as many funds that do hotels as you would think. So I chose to do direct investment, but I also, you know, did my research, knew the people I was investing with, got to see the properties as well, before I, before I really dived in. And so that’s how I’ve been able to do it with confidence.


But I will say it is different. You will not always meet people who just invest in hotels, but when I learned and I met people who did it, I learned how they were doing it and why, and then I’ve been teaching others. So you can definitely do direct investment.


Alright.


So for the insurance, the first case study I have is someone who has excess cash flow because you can have excess cash flow of a thousand or so, and then it really, really makes sense. That’s what we call front loading or heavily funding your policy in the beginning. And then the next example I show you is when you fund it less, but you fund it longer.


So in this example, if you’re someone who has the cash flow and you only wanna do this for a few years, in this case, Jessica did a thousand dollars a month for four years. And then in the fourth year, she actually couldn’t even do the full amount because we have limits that you can do. So she kinda maxed out at three thousand eight hundred, but she still had quite a bit of cash. It builds up over time and then it becomes accessible for an investment. And you can actually access your cash value whenever your balance is more than zero dollars.


So this is a short term funding strategy where you, you know, quickly fund your policy at a high amount for a short amount of time, and then you can choose to take money out in the early years or leave it there. It’s really up to you. But this one is like fund it, forget it, and then don’t fund it anymore. That’s kind of the strategy that I call it.


Short-Term vs Long-Term Funding Strategies

And the reason that I personally like this is because you can contribute more than a Roth IRA, and it doesn’t have to do with your income. It doesn’t matter. As long as you can afford the contract and you need the insurance, there’s really nothing stopping you. So being able to have a high return, being able to get tax free money, that’s not limited to tax laws, is really nice. And then being able to withdraw it while you’re young or whenever you want is also a benefit.


Alternatively, if you wanted to do less, might even say five hundred dollars a month, and you are young, healthy, non smoking is always preferred because you’ll get the best rates. But in this case, Sarah’s even older than Jessica.


She’s funding it for five hundred a month, but for a longer period of time, because some of my clients will use this to, create another set of income for retirement.


So they will fund their policy for for, you know, monthly while they’re working for twenty years or fifteen years or whatever.


And then in retirement, they make no more payments, but the policy pays them.


So in this strategy, you are using half as much money as Jessica, but you’re funding it much longer than Jessica.


But this person’s goal was, hey, I wanna have forty thousand in tax free money in retirement for the rest of my life. So this is what I’m gonna do in a temporary setting in order to access tax free cash indefinitely later.


And so this is also a way to do it. Again, if you wanted to take any of this money and start to use it before retirement, you absolutely could. But I have some people who are like, you know, I don’t I’ve maxed out my employer options or my available tax free options, and I wanna still invest more towards retirement. This is a way to do it and it’s not limited.


And then it does come out to be a fixed amount when you retire and you can get that money every year until you pass away.


Alright.


So same thing, tax free, life insurance. So if she dies, the money the family gets almost five hundred k tax free, but then also, because Sarah’s strategy is tax free money in in retirement, she’s doing six thousand dollars a year to get forty thousand dollars a year in retirement, and it still has the same annual return range, but she doesn’t make any more payments in retirement. So it aligns with this idea that, hey. When you retire, you should have less bills, and your insurance shouldn’t be one of them.


Okay? So let me see.


Alright. So yeah. So I’m gonna skip to questions for that one for a second.


But if you withdraw, you still no. That’s a good question, Roxanna. So that’s the really cool part is, like, no. If you have cash and you withdraw it, you have options. You can pay it back so that you can continue to use your cash bank for other purposes.


And that’s what some people choose to do. When you use it for fix and flips, for example, you you take out money to fix the house or the do the renovations, then you sell the house. And when you get the proceeds from the house, you can put the money back into the life insurance policy. And when you do it like that, you can continue to utilize your cash bank and it’ll continue to make interest. But if you decide you don’t wanna return it, you don’t have to.


So there are, options and you choose based on kind of when you do it. So like in the Sarah strategy where she’s taking money out every year in retirement, that money is already calculated to never have to be paid back. If you took out money even before retirement one time and don’t wanna pay it back, that’s an option too. It just depends on, how much cash you have in there and whether or not you keep making payments or not.


So most of the time for people who take money out and never wanna pay it back, they still continue to pay for their life insurance, but they just have that money that they got. They don’t have to pay it back. And then even when they die, nobody’s looking for them. But for those who wanna continue to utilize that bucket, they will pay they will make payments to pay it back.


But you get to decide your repayment terms. So some people will say, oh, I’ll make I’ll make a extra hundred dollar payment until it’s paid off, and then others will make lump sum payments if they’re using it for real estate, and they have lump sum payments that come in. So it just depends. But, no, you’re not required to make the payments back.


That’s the short answer.


Thank you.


Bye, everyone.


Thanks. Bye. Bye.

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

 

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

BFCM FTW

BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) FTW

Transcript

today, we’re talking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the win.


Anybody who has any digital product of any kind needs to take advantage of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It’s been a source of literal millions of dollars for us, for those who wonder why we keep blowing out copy school every Black Friday, it’s because it brings in multiple millions of dollars when we do that. So I recommend it to everybody.


And I mean everybody. Every mastermind I’m in, everything that I’m in, I tell people do your Black Friday blowout, and none of them ever do. And I’m like, alright. Fine.


But I’m going to share this with you today in the hopes that y’all do.


Sorry. We’re trying out just using k. Well, that’ll that’ll be fine.


Alright. So we are talking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, then today. I’m gonna share my screen right away. I just want a quick recap on what we’ve covered so far in these big things.


For the summer, we’ve done the IRL funnel, which includes moving from networking to getting a client, getting invited to speak, and book deal stuff. Today is Black Friday Cyber Monday promo. We’ll also have coming up this month your YouTube channel, getting your course and launch funnel up and running, which is a really big topic.


And then we’re also going to bring in two guests, Aquania. I never say her name right. I think I said that right though, is in CSP. She’s been traveling, and she does a lot of investing and, teaches people how to invest as well.


So she’s gonna come in and do a session on how to turn money into wealth, for those who do not want to always work at making money, but also don’t just wanna, like, put their money in a GIC or whatever the equivalent is for you wherever you are and make four percent a year on it or some nonsense when there’s other things, and lots of ways to, to get wealth. Wealth is fun. Okay. So we’re gonna do Black Friday Cyber Monday today.


This is a really, really big presentation as well. So I sent out the workbook. If you are thinking of putting together a Black Friday promo this year, go through the workbook in detail. I’m gonna hit on some of the key pages here, but go through in detail. And now before I begin, who, if anyone, is looking to, do a Black Friday offer this year?


Roxanna?


Nikki?


Jessica? Abby?


Nobody else? Cody, why did I think you were?


No. It’s interesting. I told you. I was going to, but I started doing this, YouTube thing for my summer of big things, and so I didn’t know if I should pursue that as well. And I don’t really have a digital product to offer, so it would probably be my services in some way, shape, or form.


Okay. Which is, like, we’ll find not a great, a great Black Friday offer, asterisk, because there are ways to make it work. Okay. Cool. So bunch of people are. And those who are not, are you not doing it because you don’t have a digital product?


Anybody wanna chime in? Yeah. It’s just the lack of digital product. Okay. Cool. So, definitely worth considering creating a digital product just for the purposes of doing a Black Friday blowout.


The first year, maybe you bring in twenty, forty, fifty thousand dollars, and then the next year is when it starts to take off. And soon, if you can have this digital offer going out into the world every year, it can be speaking of turning money into wealth, it can be a really great way, especially since it’s so condensed.


It’s one of those launches, like, we’ve all had launches over the years and launches kinda suck now.


However, Black Friday is still a time when there’s so much. Right? There’s so much motivation for people to spend and look for deals.


And if your deal can be the best looking deal in their inbox, that’s huge. Now I know it’s tough if you’re like, well, but I only sell into businesses.


Then you need to think about a way to sell into freelancers or smaller businesses that don’t have to get approval. You need to be able to get people to buy, like, as soon as they see your offer. It’s a short window, three, four weeks max with the actual Black Friday offer typically lasting, much smaller amount of time.


So does anybody have anything they wanna bring up? Any objections, anxieties, concerns about putting a Black Friday offer together?


I have a question.


Yeah.


So you just mentioned that bringing up or selling to freelancers or something like that.


And I just wonder, like, what if your list doesn’t have a bunch of freelancers to sell to?


You know?


Yep. The quest I and I think that’s fair. And when we look through the actual training, I think it’ll be easier to generate ideas for what your existing audience could look for. But Black Friday also depends heavily on ads, and that’s good.


It’s it’s good. It’s one of the few times of the year when it’s worth giving Zuckerberg half of what you’re making. The rest of the year, I get really mad about that. I don’t like it one bit.


But over Black Friday, I was like, alright. He earned his money.


Jessica? So we’ll talk about that, for sure.


Yeah. Jessica?


I just wanted to check. So I don’t have a digital product either, but my plan was to do a lot you know you know that, that product you sent me, Joe, about the summer Yes. Came up with it. Yeah.


That. So I was planning on doing, like, a live boot camp like thing, which is kind of actually a little tricky when I was thinking about, oh, shoot. Black Friday, I can’t really say publish your book by the end of the year, but I could do this thing at the you know, in twenty twenty six. Just any feedback about that in terms of doing a live boot camp and how it aligns end of year versus that’s not enough time for them to actually write and publish a book by you know?


Yeah. Totally.


And one great boot camp is a really good idea. That’s one of the off the things I have listed in the workbook for today.


The question of the value prop forward or what you’re really selling, write a book by the end of the year. I mean, you’re probably gonna sell to a lot of Americans who are gonna be celebrating a lien this year, Christmas.


But they’re gonna be busy with the holidays. So, yeah, the bananas to say you can write a book while you’re getting your house ready for grandma to come and stay.


So we can talk about what that would look like, but if you could adjust the value prop to something that still feels within reach, like, they’ll get results quickly, The speed to results will be there, but it happens in the new year. And then why they’re signing up for it a month beforehand is really just the gap you have to close. But we can talk about that as you start working through the idea.


But you don’t have an issue with, the instead of a true digital product, it’s a boot camp okay. Okay.


Good thing. No. That’s one of the things that I think everybody here should do. You don’t have to prerecord it.


In fact, you probably shouldn’t. If you don’t have a course right now, like, we’ll be talking next week. No. The week after about, putting a course together.


But, honestly, today, live is selling much better than prerecorded.


The ability to talk people, get your questions answered, etcetera. We’re hearing from people who don’t buy copy school that one of the key reasons they’re not buying is, because there’s nobody there to coach them through it or give them feedback.


And that’s what you can do with a live boot camp. Right. Thanks. Cool. Sure. Myrna just said, is Black Friday a good time to launch membership?


It depends on the offer. Given that a membership is a recurring payment, If it’s a discount on month one, no.


If it’s a discount on twelve months, and it’s a good discount and, yes, Black Friday typically does require discounts. So So when I discount, if it gives you, like, an allergic reaction, sorry. It’s time to get used to it in time for Black Friday.


It would I would argue that when we’ve done payment plans for Coffee School and we had it on subscription for two years, and we did a Black Friday promo. It was monthly recurring that the discount applied to, and people loved that. In live chat, they loved it. It was a question that came up a lot.


You’ll need chat on your sales page, just a side note, but it came up a lot. Like, so is this just a discount on month one? And when we’re like, no. It’s on every month.


And then they were like, this is amazing.


So be ready to bring the the offer to something that feels difficult for you to be okay with, because we’re talking about quantity of sales.


Okay.


Good. Alright. I don’t see anything else. Oh, wait. I stayed with an exercise program way longer than I should have because I kept getting that monthly discount.


I know. I know. My yoga studio has a I signed up on a monthly discount, and it’s it’s coming to an end.


I just want it to continue. Mhmm. I’m like, I’d still pay it, but it’s the taking away of the discount that I don’t like.


Alright. Any other notes before we dive into the training?


No? Alright. Cool. Then I’m gonna share my screen, and we’ll take a look at, at this. So you should be seeing, hopefully I don’t know if you’re seeing all my tabs. If so, apologies.


Alright. So plan on a page. Definitely work through this. It’s really straightforward, so I’m not gonna spend too much time on the the details of it outside of I was gonna show you the Gantt chart that we put together for our Black Friday promos every year, but it’s a lot.


And I was like, no. It will turn everyone off of doing a Black Friday launch, so I’m not going to show you. As we get as you start working through this and you have questions, I can reference that Gantt chart if it’s because once you’re already in it, you might not be as intimidated. But there’s just a lot that actually can go into it, but it doesn’t have to be that way.


The first time we ran a Black Friday, promo for copy school was because two people on my team were like, Joe, we’re doing this. Just do it.


And then I very reluctantly agreed to do it, and it didn’t take that much for it took nothing for me. But my team just, like, kinda flew through it. So, of course, there’s multiple people there who are working on it. Nonetheless, it wasn’t like, oh, you need three hundred ads and and and and and.


It doesn’t have to be bananas. You will need ads, though. So you’re gonna wanna build your list, build some hype beforehand, immediately beforehand. Don’t start now.


Start in October, mid October, late October.


Not too much in early November.


No. No. We didn’t send out. So Sarah’s on leave. We did not send out the worksheets, by email. They’re in Slack.


Perfect. Thanks, Nikki. Awesome.


Lead nurturing is another one. Of course, you’ll want some nurturing for the people who are already on your list and those who are joining your list, and then, of course, the the actual sales cart open part and then what to do with delivery. So there is much I can say about delivery and what to do after the fact, but given that Black Friday is about making a bunch of money and then reinvesting that money into more things for your business, especially if you’re looking to, like, build out your digital empire or whatever, you’ll wanna think about what happens during the delivery of your product. And that doesn’t happen if you’re doing it live, you’ll wanna think through that whole experience is really what it comes down to. I’m assuming most people who don’t already have a course will be doing this, live. And so, with that, you’ll wanna have the delivery of the product sorted through. Gantt charts, make sure your metapixel is installed and tracking.


It’s really straightforward. There are easy Chrome extensions to check that it’s tracking as well. So easy peasy.


If you don’t have a cart set up, I recommend Soundcard. We’ve used it forever. You can sell straight through Stripe, but it’s harder to do tracking that way a little harder to do tracking that way, and it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to do upsells if you just go through Stripe. Just use SamCart. This is what it’s built for. Really straightforward stuff there.


Develop a prelaunch offer.


We’ll talk about that. And then the development of your best possible offer. We use the phrase repeatedly at CopyHackers.


Best possible offer. Best possible offer every time talking to any contractor, every time Ry has come in and done stuff with us, best possible offer. What is that offer that is impossible for your prospect, your real prospect to say no to? And you’re probably a little uncomfortable with it.


People will tell you that’s too cheap. That’s too cheap. You’re not charging enough. It’s too it’s too cheap.


You’re you’re losing so much money, etcetera. That’s when you basically know you’re in the right vicinity, for a blowout. Right? Like, this is not a small let’s build our little business.


This is like a blowout. So you’re trying to get a lot of sales, so do the work to make sure that offer just totally kills.


Obviously, things like countdown timers and all that kind of stuff will need to be on the page.


You’ll wanna record and produce some video ads that specifically mention your offers. We’re gonna talk about ads, lightly, and feel free to ask questions for those gaps that I just cannot fill in this training period.


But some of those ads will be evergreen, and you should record them thinking of them as evergreen because April may roll around. And you might be like, you know, we had all those great assets, and I would love to do, like, a quick pop up sale or something. And I can’t because everything says, this Black Friday only. So you have to make sure that you’re doing some evergreen versions of your ads where you can have the, the producer of the ads, the actual videographer or whoever you whoever you use, they can put Black Friday overlays on it. And then they can take those overlays off for a second version of those same ads so that you just got the really good ad that you recorded that now is evergreen because Black Friday was just an overlay.


But then they’re the bottom of funnel ones where you will want to say, in your words, this Black Friday only save x percent on blah blah blah blah blah.


Make sure you’ve got updates to everything where your offer is mentioned.


So if you’ve got abandoned cart emails right now, just update them so that they’re good to go for Black Friday. I note this because we didn’t one year, and it was, like, such a miss.


And then sales chat.


On your sales page for this product, make sure you install a chat platform. We use PureChat. I like it very much. It’s very affordable.


It’s a small team over there. I think there’s two people that run it. It’s like a husband and wife or something. I don’t know what it was when they started out at least and seemed to be for a couple years there.


So they’re good, they’re responsive, and it’s a great tool. It’s we’ve used lots of live chat tools. PureChat’s the easiest, in my opinion, for a small business to run. So, like, Paul can sit on Paul on my team can sit on PureChat on his phone while he’s, like, walking his dog, and it works out brilliantly.


There are templates in there, like, templated responses that make it really easy to just, like, start answering key questions. And as you start putting your Black Friday, Cyber Monday offer and, like, full campaign together, just come back to Copy School Pro sessions and ask, like, Joe, I’ve done this. What do I do with this? Which are your sales chat templates, etcetera? And we can talk more about that as we get into it as you get into it. If I were to dump it all on you now, there’s there’s so much, that I’d much prefer that you just keep coming back and we can keep talking about it.


Alright.


That’s it for, like, those high level stuff. Your best possible offer, this is where we need to talk about the actual, should I make this bigger? So, talk about what you’re going to sell. So you’re gonna have prelaunch, and then you’re gonna have launch.


Now we have done Black Friday without prelaunch, but we wanna build your list and get some people in there who spend money and who you can start to train Facebook on. So a big part of your success with Black Friday, as I mentioned, will be ads.


In order for those ads to work, and this we have found to be true when using agencies and when doing ads ourselves. So in all cases that I can imagine across Black Friday promos, you will need ads and you will need to have prelaunch ads where you are training Meta very quickly on who buys from you so that Meta sends more of those people to you.


This is tough.


Most of the year, as I mentioned, I’m annoyed by Meta. But if you can spend a month, six weeks getting Meta really smart on who needs your stuff and who buys from you, then that will take away a lot of the frustration during Black Friday when, it’s actually very expensive to buy ads. So your ad spend is going to be high during Black Friday, but we’ll talk about how to make that not feel gross for you. And keep in mind that when you do this work intentionally, you can fully bring in six, even seven figures.


I don’t I’ve never seen a seven figure myself done on the first time through, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. So and six figures absolutely can. Absolutely can. Absolutely be done.


So try not to think, oh my gosh. I’m spending fifty thousand dollars on ads. And instead, try to think, oh my gosh. I made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars this form in this four month period.


Zuckerberg took fifty of it, but I have a hundred thousand still left, and I can do a lot with that. And and you learned how to do this on your own business so you can sell it to clients if you want to going forward for ecommerce all throughout the year. They’re constantly running offers, and you can do it for yourself again next year having learned a lot and then, ready to do whatever the next year’s offer is. So we’ve got prelaunch offer, which is, like, really low cost tripwire type thing, something quite low cost, those seven bucks where there’s a good discount, and then have a series of upsells on that if possible.


So a series of ebooks might be like your core offer. And then, again, using SamCart, you have up an upsell funnel set up, which would have a series of SOPs to get something written or to run your business. So depends on what the ebook is, if it’s a book or a series of ebooks. And, again, you can throw this together using, like, type set or whatever that other SamCart tool is.


Like, take your blog post, jump them all in there, and then have it produce your book for you. This is not this is not the kind of stuff that Jessica is publishing. It’s not that ebook. It is manuals.


It’s how to get something done. It’s, the big book of templates for SMS campaigns or whatever the hell. Whatever it is. But it’s just like a big fifty page something that you can sell regularly priced at twenty nine, put it in SamCart for twenty nine dollars, then have another one that’s seven dollars so that you are selling them both for that price.


Have the upsell in there of SOPs that support what the ebooks value prop is and then perhaps another bundle of something else. You figure out what that, like, upsell funnel is. But the the reason to have an upsell here is because in most cases, the first thing that you sell is just consumed. Like, the any money you make off it goes right into paying for your ads.


So you might lose money out of the gate, and it’s the upsell where you’ll actually make that money back and possibly have enough to then support you having a higher budget for your Black Friday launch itself. Now for Black Friday, for that Black Friday offer, which is not only going to be on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It’s not Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. It’s the week leading up to Black Friday onward.


Again, this is really useful for Meta to be able to learn because you’re gonna shift your offer. You’re gonna have two ad sets inside your one Black Friday campaign.


So it’s Meta’s been learning who to throw into this campaign, but when you add in this new ad set, you also need to give Meta some time to start figuring out who’s going to buy this other offer that you have. It will be based on the campaign wins that you’ve seen so far, but this new ad set is going to be for a different offer, which is your Black Friday offer. So you need a little more time than four days. It can’t really do that much in four days.


So this is where you have your course, a bundle of courses, bundle of ebooks, bundle of all the things that you’ve got. Like, this is like look around your desk. What do you use? Like, what is a file that you have saved somewhere that’s like, this is all my cool stuff for my business.


This is how I get x, y, and z done. Go open up that Dropbox, get your VA to, like, anonymize it, everything in it, and voila. Now you sell that. That is a wonderful thing to sell.


And then there’s the option, Jessica, you mentioned this, the make it after you sell it thing. So put a live three part boot camp together with a community that you can, like, again, make it sound extra good by having that circle community or something private or you guys call each other on Voxer. I don’t know. Whatever.


But you don’t have to make it beforehand and you probably shouldn’t.


Rather, what is the thing that your audience, people that have a hunger that you can satisfy, what can you put together for them? And then, of course, you wanna make it easy and fast to say yes. Definitely add in as many payment, methods of payment as you can inside SamCart, which is really easy to turn on, because it’s connected to Stripe or you use SamPay. Whatever it is, make sure you’re activating Apple Pay. It’s very frustrating to try to buy something on your phone when people haven’t activated Apple Pay, especially since it just takes, like, slight turn it on. There. Now you take Apple Pay.


PayPal is great if you’re selling into businesses, because PayPal feels like fake money so often, for a business, but it’s real money for you when you get it. So that’s good. Make sure you’re auto applying discounts. Don’t expect them to put a coupon code in.


I know that there’s all sorts of data, like, but in entering the coupon code now, blah blah blah. That’s true, except Black Friday moves fast. Do not slow people down in any way when they are on that point of purchase. So no discount, no coupon code.


Sorry. You can still have a place for a coupon code. Have coupon code set up so that when you’re in chat and someone chats you and says, I’m in the military. Do you have a coupon for me?


Sure. I do. I’m a teacher. Do you have a coupon for me? Of course. I do.


I’ve bought from you before. I follow you on Instagram. Do you have anything for me this Black Friday? Sure.


I do. It’s ten percent off for all of them. Call it loyalty ten or BFCM ten or whatever it is. It doesn’t matter if people guess that.


Who gives a crap? You lost another nine dollars on a ninety nine dollar sale. So what? You still made the ninety dollars.


So we’re good. And that’s what’s important. The less involved you are in the product, the more margin you have. Right?


So that’s where I don’t want you to be selling services. I’d much rather you sell something where once you’ve once you’ve built it, you don’t really have to worry about delivering it or doing anything. Now when it comes to having a boot camp or something like that, you will be involved.


That’s where we can talk about how you can ensure that you’re not unless unless this is, like, the first go of something that will become a course for you, in which case it’s a really good use of your time. I mean, in almost all cases, it’s going to be a good use of your time to, like, be heavily involved. But I’m looking for you to have really nice margins so that you don’t end up saying, oh, I can’t possibly give this discount or stressing that you’ve now got to spend the next twelve weeks with a group of people who underpaid and so they undervalue and they don’t show up and they don’t do the work, blah blah blah. All that stuff is very real, very true. So we wanna make sure that, like, when you’re putting that offer together, when you’re figuring out what that product is, you’re accounting for all of these, like, delivery nuances.


And then final note here is have a back end offer ready to upsell inside your tech. What time are we at? Okay. We’re at ten thirty, so I’m not gonna spend any more time on it here.


Do go through the workbook.


We have prelaunch and launch. This prelaunch and launch, like, your primary offer is going to cover ad spend. Get your head good with that. That’s anything you’re selling here is gonna cover ad spend. You’ll make more than that, but if you can at least say, alright. If I sell fifty thousand dollars worth of product and I spend fifty thousand, that’s cool as long as I have a two to one return on advertising spend, based on the upsells that are on the other side.


Confirmation page. Also, don’t just drop people right in product. Talk to Katie about this stuff as well. Katie is all back end offers and an expert on it.


But the confirmation page does not just like, congratulations.


Go to your product now. Check your inbox.


Make sure you’re putting them into something. You’ve you’ve not been a customer that you can upsell into another customer. They haven’t exhausted all of their money. They haven’t spent all of their money.


What you’ve offered them is going to help them make more money. So don’t hold back. Don’t like, oh, now we’re just friends. No.


You’re not. You’re friendly. You love them. You appreciate them. You want the best for them, and the best thing for them is for them to continue buying more from you if it will help them make more money.


If it won’t, you’ve gotta deal with finding a way to make more money for them. If it will, voila. Now you just keep charging them more, so put them into, a funnel.


This is where I really wanted to spend most of my time. So we might talk about this more in September, October when you’re actually starting to set up those Black Friday ads.


This is all again, I’m not an ads person myself. Many times, I find them frustrating.


Black Friday is when they make sense for me, and I learned a lot of this from Brian at SamCart. So and he has spent, I assume, much money. Made so much money off ads. He’s learned so much, that he’s definitely worth listening to, and I’ve made a lot of money listening to him, talk about ads during Black Friday in particular. So check this page out. If this is the first time you’re seeing it, go back, print it out, put it next to you.


That’s for the setup of the ads. This the running of the ads is where the real gold is. Now ads are going to be expensive as I mentioned. Very expensive once you’re in Black Friday, and that’s why the more Meta knows upfront about who buys from you, the cheaper your ads can be, the better your return on advertising spend is likely to be. There’s these numbers you’ll need to know.


You will. Just be a CFO about it. This is where you stop with creativity, stop with surveys, and focus on real hard quantitative data that says, are we making money or aren’t we? Because as soon as your RO your return on advertising spend ROAS is two to one, that’s when you wanna start increasing your budget.


We can talk in great detail about this, but this this part here, this tiny little bit down here, maybe with this included, this this is where all of your money comes in. This is how you make money over Black Friday. Everything else is required in order to have something to sell and make sure that it is valuable to your prospect. But this is where you get Zuckerberg to work for you.


So check that out. Finish reading through all of it. This is a very long list, a short list actually of all of the things that you’ll need. If it feels like a lot, that’s why it’s called the summer of big things, and it’s one big thing that you can do to make you a lot of money. Alright. Any questions, thoughts, concerns?


No? There’s a lot. There’s a lot. But there’s very little that we’ll cover in any training that will make you as much money as Black Friday. I would say there’s nothing else that we’ve ever covered or will cover that’ll make you as much money as Black Friday will. Liza?


Yeah. Okay. So I love this idea. I’m because I’m transition I’ve transitioned into this space over the last, like, year or so, I don’t have a huge email list to give Meta, like, a lookalike audience or anything like that?


No. No. You actually don’t do lookalike audiences.


I know that it was like, oh, I should.


Meta knows more than any of us know about the right audience for you. I know it’s hard to trust it. I struggle outside of Black Friday. I struggle to trust Meta.


You don’t have to do anything more than say, this is the country that they should be in. And, basically, everything else, Meta starts to figure out. And so read through that running ads page because it’ll walk you through that. But go ahead.


K. Yeah.


I was just wondering if I should focus on building my email list because my some of our big things is focusing on my onboarding, like, making sure people, you know, see my workshop video and things like that, and get that Yeah.


Centered in.


So I didn’t know if I should be shifting focus a little bit, but that makes sense.


Yeah. I would say this is where let honestly, that’s how I talk to myself about it. Let Zuckerberg earn the money this time. He won’t most of the year, but this time yeah.


Let that I know that, Advantage Plus audiences in, Meta Business Manager, it gets some, like, bad vibes out there. But the people who are spending money and seeing results actually trust, Advantage Plus audiences, which is just Meta saying, like, just shush. You sit there. We’re gonna go find people.


And those who buy, then when you see the money start to come in and that’s like you have to wait for three or four hundred bucks to start coming in. So you’ll probably have spent three or four thousand by this point, and you’ll feel gross about it. And you’ll start to see three or four hundred, and that’s when you can start doing the math around return on advertising spend. Are you now starting to see a return of one point two, one point four?


And once you get at two to one, then you dial up your spending because you’re saying, Meta, good job. You finally found them. Good. Do more of that.


And it’s like, cool. Every time you change your budget, Meta responds. Meta changes things. When you don’t change your budget, you keep it running, Meta is like, cool.


Everything’s good, I guess. So that’s where let Meta do that work. You don’t need to list build beforehand.


Okay. And then if I don’t have anything as of yet, should I be testing out offers now?


Like It’s gonna be a very different vibe during Black Friday.


Right? You’ve got people who are, like like, buzzing for offers. Like, they’re looking for it, versus now. They’re not spending money.


They don’t give a shit about anything. October is a terrible time to test an offer. If you look at graphs from, like, finance people, the year goes great and then October dips and then it comes back. So, like, it’s a really it’s tricky.


You’re just gonna have to put your best foot forward for Black Friday and say, like, look.


I don’t know, but we’re gonna try it this year, and that’s how it’s gonna be. But I wouldn’t test anything because it’s gonna be different when people are highly motivated.


Okay. Yeah. Good point. Awesome. Thank you.


Okay. Sure. Nikki. Question. Yes.


Okay.


First, I have to wrap my head around the fact that, like, people buy things from ads because, like, I just I can’t believe it.


Like, why? Okay. Yep. You say it, then I’ll believe it.


Hey. That’s I it’s not yeah. I was on Business is built on it. Yes. It’s like a lot. Yeah.


But, like, the whole, like, know, like, and trust thing, like, where is that?


So anyway Well, and that’s where when we’re getting into the actual ads, if you’re showing up on camera, there’s still all the know, like, and trust there.


The bottom of funnel offer heavy ads, which, I mean, to be fair, a lot of your Black Friday ads will be offer heavy. But you’ll still be putting together testimonial ads in there and other things that build on the know, like, trust factors. Yeah. So go ahead.


No. I’m just wondering, like, follow-up from Black Friday, like, retention stuff. Like, any thoughts there, I don’t know, follow-up offer offers or nurturing of any secret.


We haven’t been good at that, mostly because I just I think because I’m the one person in my circle who runs Black Friday stuff.


Nobody else does outside. I mean, a little, but not really. And so, I don’t I I just I just take the win. I take the money win, and then I use I invest in it, but I don’t I don’t and Katie can attest to this, like, having set up some of our back end stuff now.


We don’t have a lot of those post purchase offers.


We just people go on a list and then we just nurture them from there, but I I can’t I can’t at all speak to what to do once they’ve become that paying customer. I can speak to get the customer, get them to spend a little more money if you can during that that Black Friday time.


And then from there, you’ll have a separate retention or upsell strategy or whatever that might be. Yeah.


Awesome. Katie?


Yeah. I have a similar question about if we’re selling if my like, obviously, my primary offer is done for you services.


So the question about, like, it’s a different buyer.


Mhmm.


But is it?


Is it Like, so what’s a piece that you could chip off? And I think for you, Katie, like, people don’t know nearly the course creators, SaaS founders, people out there who are entrepreneurs, own they own their own business. However, Meta finds them, they own their own business, and they just need to learn about back end offers. You could have a really solid mastermind twelve week boot camp on, like, find your back end offer, step that thing up, or something like that. But I feel like that and then that would, of course, sell into, okay, Katie. Thank you. That was great.


Beginner audience is what you’re, like For an audience of stage awareness.


They’re probably low stage awareness. They’re high on pain for I need to make money.


They’re high on pain for the frustration of I have this product, and somehow I’m not making good money. What’s going on?


And then you swoop in with that. So any any pre offer stuff could be, like, introduction to your back end offer. What even is a back end offer? Like, all of that early stuff, and then have some sort of group boot camp to three thousand bucks down to two thousand bucks this Black Friday only, starts in January, get your year going right, whatever, and try to sell fifty, a hundred people on that, with even, like, one on one coaching as an upsell.


Yeah. I don’t know if that’s what you’re asking. I just got excited for you.


Well yeah.


So I’m hosting a live master class Good.


On the thirteenth.


K. So I was planning to turn that into a digital product.


K.


But I feel like maybe that’s the pre offer then, and then the boot like, some kind of live thing is the is the main offer.


Okay. Yeah.


Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Thank you for letting me think it through. Yeah. Cool. Anybody else?


Yeah. Nikki.


I’m just thinking of the the prelaunch. Do we talk to those people also?


Like, those people go into, like, a funnel and get you Oh, yes.


Prelaunch is all about getting people into your list that are buyers so that when Black Friday hits, you’re still running ads to acquire more. You’re gonna have retargeting ads in play as well.


And so anybody who’s hit your website in the last thirty days, which will include these people because they probably have hit your website in the last thirty days, the prelaunch offer purchasers, those are who you’ll retarget to, which is typically a little bit more affordable, especially since they’re more likely to buy. Know, like, trust. But then they’re also on your list too. So you can save a bunch of money, by doing, like, a two day pre BFCM.


So before you turn your launch offer on, and this is in the workbook, before you turn that on and Meta knows about it, the actual offer for Black Friday, you can run, like, a a webinar with those people who just bought and say, like or call it a whatever you have to call it so it doesn’t sound like a webinar, and do, like, hey. You’re gonna get if you sign up today, you get our Black Friday offer early, plus we’ll credit you the cost of or the amount that you spent when you first bought our ebooks or whatever that thing is as, like, nice little extra incentive, so that you can clear out a lot of those people before, before Meta starts charging you to sell to them.


Yeah. Cool. Yeah. There’s much to do. But it is it’s three months of work that can pay off very nicely.


And, I mean, I’m keeping numbers low here when I say, like, make a hundred thousand in order to because I know people think, oh, people think thoughts about bigger numbers, like, they’re impossible to get or something. But if you can get a hundred thousand, you can get three hundred thousand. If you can get three hundred thousand, you can get a million. So, like, this is much more doable as, like, a big swing initiative, if you just do all of the work.


That’s all it takes. It’s just all of the work. But if you can do that for the two months leading up to it and then run live chat for the actual week or two weeks that you’re running an offer, just just close all day. Just close, close, close.


So it can be pretty big.


What would a minimum offer like, you don’t wanna sell, like, a hundred dollar offer for your main offer.


What would the minimum price like, where do we wanna hit?


For prelaunch or for your actual offer? The actual offer. Oh, not a hundred. Go higher. Go much higher because you’re gonna be doing something cool, like something live or some killer course.


The lead up to it is also collecting testimonials. So if you’re like, this is the first one that I’m running it, find ways to get so that you can have those ads that are single image ad or a quick video ad. Someone gave you a testimonial.


Get someone in the group to go through your training and, like, run it run them through it. Like, work together. This is what bros do all day. They just, like, cross promote each other nonstop.


So do it with everybody else in the room too, to collect that social proof. Right? Because that’ll help you sell, of course, a bigger ticket offer, but the discount is largely what people are looking at. Right?


They’re, like, fully high alert on what is the big offer in my inbox, what are these cool offers other people are talking about they landed. And if someone says on LinkedIn, I just scored Nikki’s course on email x, whatever, on human emails, or on million dollar emails, then, that’s cool. Right? Then they’re looking through, like, oh, how much was oh, wow.


You saved sixty seven percent. That’s, like, seven hundred dollars or whatever.


They’re looking for it for for the deal. Yeah. It’s deal hunters.


Yeah. So that you don’t have to go low. You just have to make the discount meaty. Yeah.


Katie.


So if you’re creating something new that you’ve never sold before, how do you frame the discount?


Oh, okay. So FTC would say you can’t discount it until you’ve run it for a certain price, so set it up. Set it up in SamCart for your twenty nine ninety seven.


It’s public. It’s live. Sucks that you suck at selling it at twenty nine ninety seven, but nonetheless, it’s been live and that’s that. So that’s really I mean, look at AppSumo has been bullshitting everybody with what things cost and the discount for a billion years, and Noah Kagan has never been brought before the FTC.


So I wouldn’t I wouldn’t worry about it. I would have, protected myself from that by just putting a page up live beforehand with the full price.


Yeah.


And then I guess after your deadline, change it back and Yeah.


Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.


Totally.


I bought Thrive’s card, panicked that I was gonna miss out on the deal that is still going on four years later, so I have no problems.


No.


We’ve all been there.


We’ve all done that.


Alright. Cool. Well, we are switching over now to the general q and a part of the day.

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

 

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

My Locked-In Book Deal

My Locked-In Book Deal

Transcript

Jessica, you’re gonna talk to us a bit today, run a bit of a discussion. You look surprised by that.


No. I would I’m not talking to you. I’ll talk with you about Perfect. Otherwise, if I was talking to you, I would have prepared slides. But Joe told me that he had no slides. And I was like, okay.


Exactly. Running a discussion.


So today’s session, also, welcome, everybody.


Today’s session, we are talking the big thing that we’re focusing on, is my locked in book deal. So I’m gonna share some insights into how it’s pretty easy to get certain kinds of book deals.


And then alternatives to getting a book deal, of course, are just actually publishing the book yourself, which is basically the thing to do right now for a lot of reasons. So, Jessica, of course, as for those who don’t know, Jessica Jessica, do you wanna describe what you do so I don’t botch it?


No. You should do it, and then I wanna analyze and see if you do it well.


Shit.


How would you describe what I do?


So Jessica takes books largely from idea or early draft to published and promoted.


So that’s so the way I see Jessica’s work is a lot of ghostwriting, get the book to a really good state, get it published by yourself, and then get people to start buying it, buying and buying more of it. Jessica, would you add anything or change anything there?


No. I think that was very nice, and I might, grab that little hook you said at the beginning. But, yeah, I think that and then I’m zeroing in a lot more on the book sales strategist. So I’m coming in a lot more.


People typically come to me now when they’re thinking they wanna launch. And then but I’d really like to zero a lot more in on the sales after. So post launch when people are like the most common thing is you have sales go really, really high during your launch, and then it’s like sometimes slow, sometimes a crash to very few sales after the post in the post launch phase. So that’s where I’m coming in a lot more with a lot of different types of funnels, and helping people pick that back up. But a lot of the people who come to me are not the ones who are solely focused on book sales. That’s one KPI for sure, and it’s definitely helpful.


But a lot of people are like, no. I really wanna be the as Abby helped me figure out the undisputed authority in their industry. They don’t want anyone to come up in, you know, ChatGBT or Google or wherever they wanna be the name. And, they also want speaking engagements, and oftentimes, they want clients more better to whatever it is. One client I just had was a lactation specialist, so she wanted more clients to her practice in Austin. And then another client wants more clients for her agency.


So it’s that kind of work really.


But yeah. So do you want me to kick off our discussion?


Well, so the note that I had for the discussion, but Yeah. Feel free to take it elsewhere, is how long does it take to move move a book from idea to published?


Yes. I have a wonderful story about this. It so, the leads that I get, every every person I’ve ever worked with thought about working or whatever, has come back at some point.


Usually, if they work with me in the first couple weeks, certainly in the first couple months, they come back going holy crap. I had no idea that publishing a book took this much work.


And so, last week, I had a new lead call. They, worked with a ghostwriter and were kind of wrapping that up, and they already they were basically doing it backwards. They already had a date set in October for their book launch event, a very large one, fifteen hundred people invite kind of situation. Yet, they were reaching out to me last week and in our discussion came to find out not only is the book still in process, there is not a finalized title, which means there is no cover. The interior is not finalized yet.


The venue had already been determined, set, and ready to go and all the things, and we’re talking about a three month turnaround.


That’s probably the most extreme timeline I’ve ever been on at least in terms of having an an official in real life event plus the actual launch. So, so just to give you, like, some context on the timing. Traditional publishers, you’re talking the big five. So Simon Schuster, those kind of folks.


And sometimes they’re five, sometimes they be whatever.


But typically, traditional pubs, big five.


Once your manuscript is basically finalized, it’s on average about twelve to eighteen months to get to your launch date. Typically, that’s average.


And then hybrid publishers are all over the place and there’s a lot of different options there. I’m sure Joel will talk about that. But in my business, if you’re a first time book, we talk about, seven to nine month because I’m able because I know the timelines, and there’s multiple and they interchange and they overlap and some things have to be done. Like, you have to have a title before you have a cover.


Like, that’s you you have to have that. And don’t you dare go on Amazon and put up a preorder with a book title, that you’re not sure about because you’re locked in. There’s no going back. So just some, like, little tidbit stuff, but that’s what I work in is all of this stuff.


And, and if you do it out of order, it gets really messy.


So typically seven to nine months, but you better have a pretty solid book or you could be like Abby and Joe who have a topic, know exactly what they wanna write, and how they want it to look. They’re very fast writers and they get shit done and they just focus on it for a certain amount of time and then it’s like off. If you’re that kind of person, a Joe and an Abby, then, certainly, you can do shorter publishing.


But I definitely wouldn’t recommend that if you don’t meet that criteria or, or if you don’t have the resources and the money to get people to help you with all that, then don’t rush it.


And then, of course, then in the yeah. So that’s, like, in a nutshell kind of the timing that I have seen. It’s all over the place, but, I mean, the biggest tidbit would be start with two things. So your first question is, who are you writing the book for?


Who’s the reader? Who’s the ideal reader? And it’s all the things you already know from being in Joe’s sphere that it goes beyond a persona. Right?


It’s beyond demographics. It’s problems, desires. What is the problem your book is going to help them solve, or inspire them to do whatever?


Get clear on that. And then the second question is, what do you want the book to do for you? What’s the goal? And then that’ll dictate your entire strategy.


And then the other part of that question is what are you willing to do for that goal? If you want if it’s all for you about book sales, what are you willing to do to get book sales no matter what? That kind of stuff. So I just kind of start with the reader, then be clear on your own goals, And then what are you willing to do for that?


And it should set the trajectory for your entire launch, whether it’s, hey. I’m gonna, like, be like Abby, get this done. And what was it? Forty hours, Abby?


You went from nothing to a manuscript?


Or if you’re someone who it’s gonna take longer, but you need to be clear on those things before you set up any kind of calendar of what should be done because you need to be clear on those things. So it’s all things you all know about goal setting. And then if you’re a copywriter or business owner, you know these things. So just get clear on what you want to get out of it and the kind of person and writer you are and how much money and time you can invest, and that’ll dictate everything.


There you go. There’s my lecture.


I love the classic, expert awesome.


What don’t you know? What don’t you know, bitch? Scared.


Who here knew that it takes seven to nine months?


I’ve been through it, and I didn’t know that. No. So yeah. No, girl.


Thank you. Like you know that. Okay. Sure.


Oh, Jess.


Alright. Oh, Jess. Anybody have any questions for Jess based on that? Jess, if you’re cool with questions.


Absolutely. I’ll tell you if I don’t know.


Okay. Nikki?


Hello.


Hi.


How much should we invest if it’s, like, we’re just doing it as an authority piece? Like, I don’t really care about book sales. I just wanna be known as an authority.


It feels really weird to invest a lot of money. Oh, yes. He’s like my tiniest one shaker because he’s a twin, so he’s smaller. Like, you should have seen the others were dripping off.


Anyway, how much should we be investing? Like, prepare to invest.


Does it make sense to invest if it’s just an authority piece?


It comp it’s again, you’re not gonna like any of my answers. It completely depends on it completely depends on what what you want out of this. So in terms of client if are you gonna one, are you gonna write it?


Are you gonna hire a ghostwriter?


You’ll write it? Okay.


Okay.


Okay.


So if you’re gonna write it, then you don’t have sorry?


You said, I guess I wanna hear both. Okay.


Yeah. Okay. How much, then a sub question for if you’re thinking about ghostwriting, are you going to make sure that they can use AI, or would you use AI at all part of the writing process?


Yeah. That’s fine.


Okay.


So if you were if I were straight up going with a ghostwriter, those are wide ranges. But if you allow for them to use AI, then you could probably get lower cost too for that as well. Ghostwriters.


Okay. There’s a company what is his name? Joe, you probably know.


I always mess up their names.


There’s a guy you can hire and I think they’ll do the interviews with you. It’s a fast turnaround book. It’s very formulaic.


So if you’re cool with, like, strict formulas and being like a bunch of other books out there, just fill in. It’s basically a template that you’re filling in with your interviews and then they make it nice. I think that package, if I remember correctly, is around like twelve thousand dollars or something like that. I forget if that’s a self publishing guy or whatever.


And then there’s ghostwriters who are ghostwriting for big names and big business names and those are over a hundred thousand dollars. So I mean it really just depends and I would certainly recommend that you do some form of a I need to see the kind of writing work that you do before you get into paying that kind of thing for a ghostwriter and get really clear in the contract about how and when they can use AI. Because if they’re just gonna straight up, take your interviews that you record with them and pop it into Claude or something and have that, I’d almost say don’t waste your money on that you could do that or have an assistant do that. That’s so basic.


So get really clear if you’re allowing AI in the ghostwriting part of it, you need to I mean, it really does need to be spelled out how and when it’s used. If you’re writing the book, then for sure here are the things I would never do unless you have design background. Okay?


You I think if you have basic, frankly, cover design, it’s important. Yes.


But you could get away with doing it yourself with Canva and AI help and kinda putting things together. You could.


It’s a pain in the butt if you want to turn it into all the different file types you need, so I probably would invest in a cover designer just for that part.


Interior design, don’t do it yourself unless you wanna use a tool called Atticus and you wanna be the person going in there copy pasting formatting doing all the stuff. I personally think that’s pretty low level for most of the I would imagine most of the people in this room. I would have an assistant do that or, go on to, Fiverr or Upwork or whatever and get an interior designer to do it for you, check their work, that kind of thing. I would invest in that one for sure. I think that’s just so time consuming and not worth it for you.


Let’s see. So interior design, cover design, you have to pay someone pay someone to be your second set of eyes, and I do not mean pro writing aid. So for editing and then the this is the one that everybody forgets.


Once you have your interior design, your book is in its formatting and all of that, awesome, except you need someone to go in there and proof and make sure that not only are there not spelling errors and all that editing stuff, but also it looks nice, and and you don’t want the designer to do that because they’ve also, you know, you guys know it’s not fresh eyes and you you start fixing things with your eyes even though it’s a problem, so get even a basic editor. Some I don’t think you should have to pay more than a few hundred dollars depending on your your, how many words are in your book, but, a couple hundred I would think somewhere between two and four hundred, you should be able to pay a proofreader to go through, and you’re gonna have if an ebook, you’ll have either a PDF form of that or a epub if you’re publishing on any of the Amazon, Barnes and Noble, whatever. And then your PDF will also be if you do a paperback or hardcover.


Those are all separate files that you need someone to proof and make sure they look good and actually pull it up in their Kindle and go, okay, does this look okay? Is this image, you know, fuzzy? Does it, you know, that kind of stuff. So you want someone I would invest in a second or third pair of eyes to prove that when it’s in its format.


Marketing. If you can do your marketing, you can do your marketing for your book.


If you’re a business owner with budget, I would invest and at least get some consulting on it. The biggest thing that I think most people should probably invest in is some form of a consultant on the things that you just don’t know about the back end of publishing. So if you are gonna publish, you all could just publish on your own, have your own funnel, and you send them the PDF file or the ebook file. You could do that.


You get all the royalties. You don’t have to worry about Amazon and their stupid rules or them taking over fifty percent of your money. You could do the whole thing. You could run your own ads, take it all and do it do it yourself.


The caveat to that, of course, is that you won’t appear on Amazon. You’re not gonna be on Barnes and Noble. So some people really like being able to say I’m a published author and you can go to my Amazon to see that. It just, again, depends on your goals.


But if you are going the other way and you wanna be on all the different places, your visibility and that and I do recommend that if this is gonna really be an authority piece for you, then I would recommend even hiring a consultant for, like, an hour or a VIP day depending on what they offer, but have them walk you through, okay, how do you get on Amazon? I literally had a client who just thought, I’ll take this Word doc and pop it into Amazon and it’s all good. Right? Ebook?


And she she just had no clue about formatting or she hire oh my gosh. This was and this is one I’ll tell you. Oh my gosh. Please don’t do this. You’re not you’ll get you’ll get punished.


I know because we made the mistake.


Do not hire someone to and give them access to your Amazon account that you use. You cannot it’s against their terms of use. You’re not allowed to do that. And you can go on Reddit and all that, and you’ll see people getting their Amazon account shut down.


So when you’re publishing on Amazon, when you hire this consultant, which I, like I said, I recommend, you would hop on Zoom, you’ll share your screen, you’ll go into your Amazon, they’ll tell you, okay. Here’s how you upload the file. Here’s the categories you should put your book in. Here are the keywords you should do if they provide that as part of it or at least they should tell you how to do it.


And then here’s the book description. Put all that in. Here, let’s go through your pricing. Make sure that your pricing is optimized for all the countries that you want it in.


Don’t do wide distribution, you know, all the things. They should walk you through that, but you have to be doing all the clicking especially on Amazon.


I promise I will look at the chat in a second, but you will derail me if I look at it. It. So anyway, so yeah. So, like, I would hire someone to at least give you the or or I’m sure there’s plenty of course oh, no.


You know what? Now I take now that I say that, I’m lying. That’s not true. I’ve looked for these courses.


There aren’t many. There aren’t many courses out there telling you how to set this stuff up. So, yeah. I would hire a consultant who knows what they’re talking about, walks you through it all, make sure that you know that your title has to be final before you set up a preorder in Amazon.


Otherwise, you’re screwed. You can’t change it, that kind of stuff. Your content has to be final when you submit it. If you make major changes to content, they will not consider it that book.


They’ll make you do a second edition. It gets messy if you do this stuff out of order. So if anything, I would invest if I could pick one thing, it’d be someone who understands the process of getting those things on Amazon and all the platforms in the right order and, frankly, making sure that you don’t click the wrong thing. And I know I’m being dramatic, but it is actually true, and I would imagine Abby or Joe could back me up on this.


There are just certain things you can’t come back from once you do it. So, yeah. Okay. Sorry. Should I go in the chat? I feel like I’m just chatting away here.


I think it’s mostly outside of the Caitlin has a question to clarify if a different user signs in using your credentials, Amazon will boot you.


Oh, sorry. Say that again?


Her question was, to clarify, if a different user signs in using your credentials, Amazon will boot you?


Yeah. They shut down your Amazon account. You’re you are fired. You’re done. You don’t get that. That account’s gone.


Dang.


And not just if they can figure out so here’s the thing.


Amazon is always if you’re an Amazon user, they track you everywhere. Amazon knows your Facebook friends. So that’s why it gets a little interesting when you’re trying to get reviews for your book, by the way, another really important thing, because if Amazon can see that it’s a friend or family or related to you on other platforms because they get they have access to information, and your recommendations all the stuff you do to share, you know, they they have a lot of tracking data so, they sometimes will not approve people’s reviews And it’s why people do a lot of shady crap frankly to get hundreds and thousands of reviews because they’re paying people who are not related to them or, you know, whatever that Amazon can see somehow there’s a relationship.


I don’t recommend doing that shady stuff, by the way, but people do it because Amazon does track.


It’s good to know, g.


Yeah.


Caitlin, you have a question still?


Yeah. So okay.


So, Jess, so say, you know, I’m not focusing on the book thing right now, but say I wanted to with the goal of me doing this being to get more prospects in my pipeline for my standardized offer. But the position I’m in right now is, like, the last several years, my clients have just been word-of-mouth and repeat clients. I only, like, over the last couple of months, got started getting consistent, like, with my social media platform.


So say I’m here in this situation coming to you saying I wanna now focus on this, would you say, yeah. Go ahead. Like, this is, like, a good time to do that, or would there be other things that you would want me to prep or accomplish before I focus on this?


Okay. So what do you want the book to do for you?


Get more prospects into my pipeline.


Okay. Do you have a clear problem that you wanna solve for those clients? Mhmm.


Do you have a clear process for doing that?


Yeah.


Well So you I would say it’s it’s general right now, and Mhmm.


It’s, like, not as clear as, like, Abby’s day one ever evergreen. Like, she, like, does this, like, same sort of thing.


But if Joe came to you and said, hey, Caitlin.


I’m gonna give you a really cool opportunity. You get to come on to CSP and provide three trainings on your unique process, would you be able to figure out how to do that?


Yeah.


I know what my process is. I wouldn’t say that I’ve invented any of it.


But, like, you know, it’s like the conversion copywriting process, the, like, continued optimization, the conversion of market research.


Your flavor of it? Do you have, like, your flavor, your unique whatever on it?


No. I do market research.


I make a customer compass like Talia Wolf, and then I use, you know So there you go.


You just identified.


Okay. So that’s you just identified where I’d probably consult you on starting. So I wouldn’t I yes. You can you can always be writing.


Right? Like, track document things as ideas come to you. I do that. Pick an app, start documenting things.


You don’t have to worry about, oh, but this is gonna be my book. Don’t put that pressure on it. Instead what you need to figure out first is what’s your flavor of all that because if you think about it that’s no different than what Joe’s done what Abby’s done what everybody has done since forever is they see someone’s process they learn, they take what they like, they leave out what they don’t, they create their own kind of signature, whatever way of doing these things. But oftentimes, you can track a lot of these things back to something that came before it, right?


So I think that would be my recommendation to you right now is you’re not worried about getting this book out immediately. Why not spend the time on figuring out what’s Caitlin’s signature? What’s the flavor that you add? What’s the new thing that you bring to it, what’s the way you do it that’s different.


Focus on that, document stuff, make notes like I said, and then you could just as easily, you could get that into a book and a lot of times for me, what works best is I’m a verbal if you can’t tell, so I just hop on a recorder, and I talk. And I talk and I talk and I talk and I talk, and then I have a transcript. And then I can pop into the AI and say, if this were a chapter in my book on blah blah blah, how would you organize this rant?


And, you know, so that’s what I would do now. I wouldn’t but I wouldn’t put pressure on the book. I put pressure on I need my own way of doing things. What is that? And discovery. Just do it through discovery. That’s what I would do.


Cool.


Does that help?


Great things, Jessica?


Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Because that that’s exactly where my stuck point, I think, would, like, would be. Yeah.


Yeah. Yeah. I hear you.


We found, Jessica, once like, have you ever started a book project without being crystal clear on what, like, the unique flavor was and then found it while you were writing, or do you always have to know what it is before?


No. No. I think writing a book is discovery. So I mean, my own, certainly. But, no.


That that definitely happened with, Naomi’s book. Naomi is my client who’s a lactation person on breastfeeding, and, she thought she had the book ready. She was the one who thought it was like, yeah. Just pop that up on Amazon.


It’ll be all good. And, it was only through what I call book doctoring, which is like editing married with ghost writing and they kind of have this weird baby, then that’s what that is. And so that’s what she and I did, and then we discovered what that really was about in her.


She kind of had ideas.


Like, Caitlin, she had a lot of ideas about it, but it it just wasn’t cohesive. It wasn’t she didn’t know how to communicate it. So, yeah, it was through the writing process.


That’s good to know. Awesome. Abby? Got a question?


Oh, yeah. There you go.


Cool. Yeah. So I know we’ve been talking about this separately. I just thought I’d ask in case that, like, benefits the group.


So, yeah, last year when I launched my book, it was literally the the purpose was to have a book. Like, I didn’t really think beyond that. I was just like, Joe says get a book up, so I got a book up. And now in October, I’m launching the print edition, and I wanna do more of a proper launch this time.


And I’m just thinking about what kind of goals to set because, obviously, it’s like I want more clients. I want more course sales. But, do you have any advice to how I can get kind of more clear, and realistic, but while also being ambitious? Like, what kind of goals are healthy to set when launching a book?


It depends.


It depends on your audience size. It depends on your goals. I think that if you cannot tell me I because you’re Abby, you’re like every lead I get. Right? You’re the, yes, the I want speaking, I want authority, I want more clients for the thing. Those are like the top ones I always get.


But if you’re going to create if you’re gonna create a solid campaign, you have to what is the primary KPI? You can have the other ones, certainly.


And authority comes with a lot of this work anyway, but I think you first have to get clear on what is the one thing that you absolutely when you imagine yourself post launch with you and I on our Voxer or on a coffee, yourself post launch with you and I on our Voxer, around a coffee, talking about it the week after, what what would make you celebrate and be like, shit.


We should get together and have champagne. This is so amazing.


Or what would you be the most disappointed by? What would you be really mad at me if you actually hired me? What would you actually be mad at me for if you didn’t get this because I didn’t help you make it happen? That’s what I would honestly figure out first and I would optimize for that first.


If you can hit the other things, great. And a lot of them, like I said, you will. It’s an ecosystem. It’s not one, you know, but I would get very clear on and I’d visualize.


That’s why I visualize the future. Post launch week, what does that look like? Celebration versus not happy, what does that look like?


Mhmm.


Cool. Yeah. I know. It’s just because I’ve because I’ve made I’ve gained some prospects and things from the e book. I guess what I’m trying to do is figure out what my, like, ten x goal is because all my goals are, like, two x goals just, like, more than what I’ve got. So I yeah. I guess that’s where I’m, like, what would the what’s, like, the ten x goal here?


What is the ten x goal for which KPI?


Well I don’t know which goal to go for the ten x if I don’t have a KPI.


Yeah. It’s either gonna be prospects or course sales or both.


Or one?


Or both? Which one?


Which one are you gonna optimize for prep? Which one’s primary?


Yeah. I don’t know.


Okay. I don’t know. So you have to you have to decide that one, and then we can absolutely ten x. But then also, Abby, I think a big one for you is what am I willing to do? And by you, I usually mean who are you gonna hire or who you gonna, like, you know, I don’t mean you as in Abby, but what are you willing to put in to make sure that that goal is hit?


Because I know you like to move fast and do the thing, and I I love that about you. It motivates me, but also you have to be realistic about does that align with whatever goal you wanna achieve.


Okay. Okay. Thanks, Jessica.


I don’t I’m sorry. I know I can tell you’re in a face. That’s not very helpful.


I’m just thinking. Well, thinking. I’m thinking.


Okay. Tell me what happens later.


I’m gonna.


Right. Caitlin.


Okay. And I know everyone in the in the chat’s like, oh, everything’s a remix. Like, I yeah. Like, I think it’s my main client is a lawyer, and and ever since working with her, I am just the most paranoid person.


Okay. My question, though, so once your clients just publish and launch their book, you talked about in the beginning of today, you know, it’s like there’s a whoop, and then, you know, it can be sort of like crickets. Do you have, like, a system or, like, this, like, go to game plan of, like, things that you get in place for, like, continued sales?


And if so, I’m just curious, like, a little bit about what those are.


Okay. So I look over here because I have a whiteboard that’s really big with my diagnostic and all the things. So that’s where I’m looking right now. Yeah.


So I have my diagnostic, and it’s basically, like, the it’s it’s known It’s a funnel essentially. So like my diagnostic is, okay, distribute. That’s the top of the funnel. How are you gonna get your book in front of the right readers and get them to buy it?


That kind of stuff. So we have that kind of visibility stuff set in place, which some of that is addressed in when you publish it first, right? Like making sure that things are set up properly on Amazon, the right categories, keywords, all of that.


And then some of that is like your ongoing social media content and making sure that you are regularly mentioning the fact that you have a book, and people can see it. And you don’t have to directly call it up. There’s a lot of ways. So I have a lot of it’s basically just making sure that I have set up the reader to whatever the KPI is, you know, lead, reader to lead, reader to client, reader all those different funnels. Reader to speaker funnel is a popular one for me.


So, yeah, reader to course funnels. So it’s that’s really what it is is if they come to me and they’ve already published, making sure that they have those pieces in place and that they’re optimized.


And if they don’t, then we set them up. And yeah. So it’s just basically a lot of optimizing a a funnel, a lot of funnels actually.


But it’s all the things you know, top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel. Making sure that they have an email marketing system that incorporates their book in a lot of different ways. Do they have a nurture sequence after someone buys the book and then gets the bonuses? Do they have bonuses to collect those emails? Like, these are all things we set up if they don’t have them in place.


So I don’t know. Did that answer your question? It’s a lot. It’s like I said, it’s an ecosystem.


Yeah. I mean, it it sounds like you kinda treat it, like, almost as not its own business, but, I mean, just like doing, like, the the typical stuff. Like, if you have those funnels, like, you’re doing top of funnel stuff to get people into it who if the goal is to then, like, get speaking engagements and making sure that you’re just, like, you know, getting all that in front of the right people and just doing different, like, even list building efforts for the book. Right? Yeah. Outside of And then it is written sprinkled into your existing stuff too.


It’s just it’s put in systematically, but then, yes, we have the sprinkles. Like, I randomly I’m like, okay. You need more clients in your agency? Great.


Go to that dream list that you have, whatever. Let’s go get some branded packaging. Pop your book in there. Let’s pop your book in there, let’s send a nice letter and mail them out, and that’s what you’re gonna do with your book to leverage it.


So it’s like there’s the ecosystem and the systems put on the back end for sure and then sometimes that includes ads and whatever. But then there’s, like, the little little sprinkles and tactics I like to do too just to test and see, if that should become something bigger, like envelopes with books in them for new clients.


Cool.


Awesome.


Thank you.


Okay. So question feels kind of nebulous, so bear with me. But I’m wondering about, like, the difference between a book that’s good and just, like, putting all your blog posts together in one document, I mean, like, this is my book. And when you think of, like, a book that is really gonna help your clients achieve the goal that they have for it, is there a certain, like, je ne sais quoi that you’re looking for? Like, does it like, what you mentioned earlier about that big idea, or is that me being a perfectionist about it? Like, I just what’s your kind of gauge for it being a good book?


I have this really awesome thing that happens in my body where I get excited about it, which doesn’t take much. My level of excite like, you could start talking about environmental science to me, which is not my thing at all, but if you’re passionate, I’ll get passionate.


So I’d say that’s, like, a key indicator to me, and it’s also what I often will say when Abby and I talk about my books is like the moment where I’m sitting there going, nah, it’s not nah, then that’s an indicator in me that I no. I won’t it’s too hard, I think, to write a book and do the stuff and all the things that you give up to take the time if you’re not excited about it, so that would be my first is do you think are you excited about the fact that this could help someone? Do you and I I do a lot of future a future manifestation or vision stuff and I just imagine you get an email or a LinkedIn comment where you talked about your book and they’re like, oh my god, Katie, I just read your book.


I am changing everything and this, I just feel like the clouds have cleared. I know what I’m doing when it comes to this thing. If that is enough to get you through this, then you should do that and if if you could imagine that happening from coming from a bunch of blog posts that are you could clearly connect them, you know, I wouldn’t recommend, okay, what, you know, don’t do anything to them, I’d probably finesse them, which you know that. But, but if you think that on the other side of putting together those blog posts and, putting that out into the world could really help someone and that excites you and you’re willing to do that, then I think you should do that.


There’s no, you know, there’s not like one way to write a book or one thing, you know, there’s problem solving books, this was in right useful books. Like there’s the problem solving books, right? And then there’s inspirational kind of other stuff where it’s a lot more thought and philosophy, whatever, doesn’t necessarily give you the steps for how to exactly solve these things. Books take on a lot of different purposes and formats, but if you think that someone could walk away with value and help them solve a problem, I mean, I don’t think you’re selfish for keeping it to yourself for not wanting to do the work, but wouldn’t you want someone to benefit from that?


Why would you hold back that information?


I don’t know. That’s just did that help, Katie? I’m sorry.


Yeah. I like the idea of, like, the tingle of excitement in your body about about that being the measure of whether or not you’re onto something.


Yeah. I like that indicator. It makes it so much easier. I don’t have to look at a chart for that.


Thanks, Jessica. Abby?


Cool. Okay. So I I do I really wanna get traditionally published. Like, it’s just like a golf thing.


So I guess I’m deciding, like, should I is there a benefit? See, because I have another business book in me called the Evergreen, Course Formula, trademarking it here. Like, that’s happening. So but I’m like, should I should I use that to get richly published? Or, like, my if it’s just, like, purely, like, for an itch, is it better to just do one of my science fiction novels and then self publish the business book?


Depends on your goals. I mean, Joe, you’ve gotta have an opinion on that. I think it comes back to your goals.


But An opinion on whether you should go with your fun writing versus your business writing?


For traditional publishing?


So, Abby, can you repeat the question?


Yeah. So I I want to get traditionally published because it’s, like, it’s my goal. It’s just, like, something I want for myself. So, yeah, the question is, like, should I use because I have two books I’m working on. One is business, one is fiction.


Like, is there a benefit enough of a benefit to being traditionally published for business that I should use that one, or is is it better to be self published for business, in which case I’ll just publish my sci fi one?


Yeah. You’ve distracted us all with this sci fi novel situation.


Tell us?


That’s I needed the bigger phrase too. Like, wait. What’s the question? Abi has a sci fi novel? Abby has many sci fi novels?


Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s either or. Right? Or, like, why choose? Just do both?


Yes. I I I do fun writing as well.


I don’t have an opinion on it. I think, like, if you’re motivated to get traditionally published, when I did, it was not fun. I didn’t enjoy the publishing process, but I would go through it again because yeah. So I don’t have a take on it. Jess Jess is like, you love it? I don’t.


Alright.


I do what feels right, but just know that traditionally published fiction is writing for librarians.


They’re your first audience.


Editors and librarians are everything.


That’s all I really have to say about it. But but if you wanna do it, do it because you’ve got that intern it’s like taking it’s like doing your PhD. Until you’ve done the fucking thing, you can’t put it out of your head, so you have to go through with it and do it. We all have this crap that we think we have to do. So if traditionally published is one of your things, just you just gonna have to do it.


Start, like, getting into finding your agents, finding an agent and all of that real work or publish Oh, and I should say I I’m sorry.


I should have prefaced that too. This has become more and more common because of shifts in publishing and all the things. It is not uncommon to self publish a book and then it takes on a life of its own and then the traditional publishers come to you and are like, hey, we wanna publish that and they pick it up. So and and there’s all sorts of interesting options because I what I’ve never liked about traditional publishing when I figured it out is how much they dictate and I don’t like being told.


And I don’t like someone else hold holding me to certain things that I don’t like. So that would give you more options too though, Abby. I mean, your sci fi thing takes off and it’s a it’s a cult phenom and all the things. You have a lot more negotiation power going into a traditional publisher when they’re like, hey, we wanna publish this when you’ve already proven it’s a great book, if there’s an audience and it’s selling, you know?


So you could and all that to say to everybody, you could start by self publishing and that’s not just fiction, that’s nonfiction and fiction. And but then suddenly, it gains momentum visibility, and you could have publishers knocking on your email inbox asking what they can do to work with you.


So Nice.


Colleen Hoover. Right? Colleen Hoover started that way?


Oh, yeah. A lot of people did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.


Cool. Abby, what quick pitch for your sci fi novel? What’s it about?


Think, the the Good Place meets Lost meets Severance.


What the fuck?


Okay. Yeah. It’s weird. Alright.


Alright. It’s sci fi.


Now we gotta read it. Cool. Caitlin, do you have a question?


Yeah. I think this will should be quick.


Jessica, so, like, do you think a lot of what you do could also be translated if instead of a book, you have a TV show on, like, NBC? So my brother has an a TV show on NBC Sports Boston.


And because I’m also thinking about this. So he’s got an online business. I’m also thinking about he’s not gonna wanna write a book.


But I’m like, other than sprinkling the credibility of that in places, I’m just wondering if there’s, like, some immediate, like, things of some, opportunities.


There’s a different phrase I’m looking for, to, like, leverage that a little bit more. And so yeah. So the basic question is just, like, do you think a lot of what you do could translate to a TV series?


I’m I’ve I’m not a hundred percent certain on the question. So what I do to help people?


Yeah. Like, the way you help them leverage their book for something inside their business.


So my brother has a fishing membership, and it’s basically, like, for people. It’s a certain region, and, they wanna learn how to fish that region. So he has, a decent sized membership, and he is selling spots in his membership.


And he’s been doing this for years and years and years, so he I don’t know how it happened. I forget. But he also, got he has a show now, a fishing show on NBC Sports Boston. So he’s, like, sort of like a little fisherman celebrity in his world.


And I’m just because now he’s my client for a very discounted rate as I told Joe last week.


But, yeah, I’m just I’m just wondering if, like yeah. Like, if he were your client and he was like, instead of this book, instead of leveraging this book, I wanna leverage this thing I already have that’s happens to be just a different medium, like a TV show.


Would there be overlap in, like, what you do?


I mean, sure. Because, I mean, a lot of the stuff that I do is, right, is repurposing content and creating strategy around expanding your authority and visibility. So certainly, yeah, I would imagine there’s probably a lot of overlap with that. But, man, I mean, why why wouldn’t you do a fishing book?


That’s what I was sitting there going, like, I I I’m in the Midwest. We fish. I’d take a TV and turn that into a transcript and put that into a fishing book. I don’t know.


I just I like to dream for people. Why shouldn’t your brother be on the cover? Like, I’m imagining the cover. He’s out there doing one of those, like, you know, whatever.


But, yeah, I would imagine there’s a lot of probably overlap.


Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But, also, this this conversation alone makes me realize we need to sprinkle that credibility more into, like, his existing things.


So even though Oh, yeah.


Good good help for today. Okay. Cool. Thanks.


Amazing. Thanks so much. Thanks, Jessica. You were gonna lead a little discussion, and now we’re fifty minutes later.


So thank you.


You should have known, Joe.


You know me well enough.


You should have known that we would Everybody has so many questions too.


That was great. Oh, good. Thank you. Yeah. Well done. Thanks.


So we can if you have time to go over y’all, I have this in my calendar for ninety minutes. If you have to drop off, please put your hand up pronto if you have a question, and we’ll hop right into your question. Otherwise, if you’re cool to stick around, then we can go another forty minutes. It’s in my calendar for that at least.


No one’s put up their hand. Cool. So we do have oh, Sabine, you gotta go. Alright. Let’s do it.


And then Caitlin No.


I don’t have to go. Sorry. If I misunderstood that, I don’t have to go. I’ve got time so I can lower my hand and wait for other people who urgently need to go.


Caitlin, will you be with me? Caitlin?


Yeah. Same. I’m not pronto.


I think I just, like like, reacted that no one has questions, and I was like, yes.


Exactly.


Okay. Cool. I just wanna make sorry. I just wanna make sure we’ve cleared up the topic of publishing, because we’ve talked about getting your, you know, self publishing with Jessica, which is great.


And for some it’s it’s I mean, I’ve self published every book outside of some novels, and my upcoming book, and it’s all great. And Jessica has been the one behind, any of the books that were published after Copy Hackers was launched as a business. So not the first four, or first seven even, but, the rich writer series and then bringing back some other, books from before. So, self publishing, great.


Awesome. Fabulous. Have a plan for promoting, of course.


Make sure you read, write useful books. It’s a must read. It will save you many iterations, especially if you’re looking to get clients or other sorts of sales out of your book.


Write Useful Books is recommended by everybody who’s written and self published, primarily self published, a book. Page two, Jessica, have you ever worked with page two or anybody who’s worked with page two?


Its publisher?


Yeah. I mean, I’ve worked with people who’ve worked with them. Yeah.


Okay. I was just wondering.


Yeah. So page two is a great they’re sort of a hybrid publisher. Aren’t they, Jessica?


Yeah. Yeah.


They’ll get your self published book out the door, but I think it starts at fifty US.


So that’s worth keeping in mind, and that’s not for ghostwriting services either. That’s just, like, to get the book out.


So let that also be, like, a sort of way to level set on what this stuff costs. And if you are ready to start investing in this, cool.


It it’s not free, but you were writers. Everybody in the room here has that unique advantage that is completely unfair that other people, an engineer who wants to write a book is basically screwed in comparison to us. Not that they can’t, but we can all get this done. So the challenge is just forcing yourself to sit down and do the thing. I personally, as a side note, set a goal, and I told my group of of of business friends slash masterminded people, that I was gonna write three books in two years, and I am on track.


So I think if you can just establish and commit to a goal, then that’s, like, that’s a big part of it. Just keep and then tell other people that that is your goal, and they will be disappointed in you if you don’t hit it. So make sure you do.


Couple notes that I’ve had. I have a book coming out with a publisher with whom I already had an existing relationship. So I just reached out to the editor and said, like, hey. I’ve got this book. Do you want to publish it?


And so and they’re a group that just accepts pitches from people. So if you’re in the workbook, I don’t know what page it’s on in the final version of the month one. But if in my version of it, it’s page forty nine. I don’t think that’s true in yours because I think this is out of order.


But it begins go direct to the publisher. That’s the title of the page, and it lists out there we list out publishers. You can just pitch directly where you don’t need an agent to pitch them.


And agents go a long way.


My, one agent in particular from Writers House has pit has, signed many of my friends to the point where I’m like, it’s kinda weird that I didn’t go with this person.


Josh Kaufman is the core one, but then we were all in a mastermind together. And, anyway, there was a bunch of people. Basically, almost every business book that’s come out in the last four years, this one person did over at Writers House. So there are good agents all over the place that you can pitch and get, and they are getting books sold.


So you can go the traditional route, but you can also just go direct to publisher too. So I’m publishing with Ben Bella. They’re distributed by Simon and Schuster. So you do get to have some of those, like, established relationships.


You get some good logos on your page and things like that. But there’s a full list of people who will publish this stuff. You can also pitch directly to Wiley if you want. Depends on your ICP.


Right? Like, who in your ICP reads the book that you’re going to write. And if you have a very technical ICP, Wiley goes a long way as a brand, so consider them. But but check that page out.


I just really wanna quickly run through some quick notes, and then we’ll switch over to q and a and just, like, open it up to normal q and a. Some of the things that have come up that I’ve noticed, and this is, I’m very close with April Dunford. I’ve heard a lot over the years about her book.


Just like Jessica, you were saying publishers reach out after it’s a success.


Yes. April would second that. Gia and Claire with Forget the Funnel, they self published as well. I think they both went through page two because April’s a big advocate for page two. It doesn’t mean you have to. I looked into page two, but I was like, well, Ben Bella can do everything they’re doing, and I’ll just go with Ben Bella.


So and Ben Bella doesn’t charge me any money. We just have a profit share. So there’s that to consider. But what I can say is you can’t tell a self published book from a traditionally published book.


Nobody looks. Nobody cares. Nobody notices anymore. Try to make your book cover look pro. I would argue that it’s good to have a great book cover in place because it will make you look more legit, versus a cover that doesn’t look legit, and then you see it self publishing like, if you have an ICP you’re trying to target who flies a lot, which a lot of people who are targeting entrepreneurs or people in large tech organizations that have, like, different places that they go to or consultancies, try to optimize for the length of time it takes to fly somewhere, and then try to get an audible in place as well.


Make sure you’re on Kindle, but get your audible version of the book up and running. Put your best stuff in your first book. When I was talking to Ben Bella, to the editor there about my book idea, and I was like, but look, here are the different books I wanna write over the next six years. And he is like, calm down.


Just bring your best your everything book, and then we’ll figure out the other stuff. And I was like, damn it. But I’ve got all these ideas. But I think he’s absolutely right because it’s very I feel really good about the book that’s now, under going through the production process.


But just put all your best shit in it. Just, like, don’t hold back, Don’t say I’ll cover that another book. I think we’ve all read those shitty books that are, like, like, you’ve got everything from the title. And if you read right useful books, it’s unlikely you’ll write that kind of book. But just, like, give it your all, like, all of your good stuff. Every example you have, there should be no examples you have that are not in this book.


Yep. I mentioned do the audiobook too.


Make sure you’re not driving to a URL that will not be forever there. So I know somebody mentioned a horror story of somebody using, like, a Bitly alternative, and then that business went out of business. And it’s, like, published in their book.


So that’s shitty because then you have to do, like, an updated version and stuff.


Book sales, bulk sales, sorry, are a big thing as well. Dan Martel has some pretty cool strategies you can just learn by watching.


If you buy, like, three thousand copies of his book on Amazon, you’ll get, a one half day in person session with him where he’ll fly you to Kelowna.


And, you can have, like, a three hour session with him, which he usually sells for about thirty thousand or fifty thousand dollars or something. But that way, it’s a really good signal.


I don’t know how much the algorithms care or recognize that, but that’s how Dan helped to become, to get buy back your time on the Wall Street Journal, I think, bestsellers list.


So bulk sales, Chinese translation.


I don’t think he’d mind me mentioning his name, but Sean Ellis, who wrote Growth Hacking, told me that his, he sold as many books in China alone as he has across the rest of the world combined.


And a lot of books are stolen too, so consider that. Like, these are all purchased books, so so don’t underestimate the power of getting someone to do, like, a Mandarin, version of the book.


And make sure you’re pitching. This is an April, tip. Make sure you are pitching conferences and podcasts well ahead of your publication date so you can have those books there. I think that’s really it.


There’s a lot more in this section to go through, and cover if you wanna pitch a literary agent. If you have more questions about any of this stuff because it’s really important to get that book out there, a book that hopefully you’ll be proud of. It’ll never be everything you want it to be, I think, is worth keeping in mind. You’ll always wanna make new versions of it, but you gotta get the thing out there anyway.


How many times how many times did Melville rewrite Moby Dick?


Three full times.


Three full times.


So, yeah, don’t don’t keep don’t keep revising it. Just publish the damn thing.


Okay. Now Now let’s move over to the q and a part of the day.

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

 

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

 

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

Planning Campaigns for Luxury Brands

Planning Campaigns for Luxury Brands

Transcript

Awesome. Okay. Cool.

So we’re gonna dive in right away here for everybody who’s just joined.

Jenny is in today. It’s five o’clock Jenny’s time, and it’s similar for a couple people in the room.

Yeah. So we’re talking about luxury brands, campaigns for them, basically working with them. If you have questions, we’ve got our usual twenty minutes up front where Jenny will be teaching, and then we’ll break into questions. So please have any questions that you’ve got written down ready to go. We’ll do the usual raise your hand, share a win, before you ask your question, and then we’ll we’ll, we’ll see when this wraps up. We’ll wrap up when we’re all out of questions, or when the hour is up.

Cool. Alright. So this is recording.

Jenny, welcome. We’re so glad to have you in today to share your insights here.

When you’re ready, feel free to start screen sharing or just dive right in. Yeah.

So the millennial question, are you all seeing my screen?

Yes. Yep.

Yeah. Perfect.

So yeah. So this presentation yeah. Welcome, first of all. This presentation was initially called the dramatic arc. And then as I, yeah, started preparing and so on, I realized, no. It needs to have a different angle. So it’s actually the store all about the story selling arc.

So you see, like, two components, story and selling here.

To run you through the contents so, yeah, first again, a couple of words about myself so you know where my approach is rooted in, then moving on the main meat of the presentation, what I call where drama theory meets copywriting, then all about the how, the examples, seeing things, applied, and, yeah, last but not least, the benefits. Why are we doing this? Why is it why is it useful? What will it bring us?

So yeah.

I initially started in house, at Farfetch now seven years ago.

And then in the midst of my journey, I I somehow found my way into freelancing, now doing it full time.

Scary transition, but totally worth worth it.

I have come, yeah, to work with some of the most notable luxury brands on this planet and, yeah, have been the voice to to their campaigns, writing everything from landscape campaigns that if you follow them, you probably have seen, to, like, crazy details like the hang tags, texts of in in exhibition halls. So very versatile background.

All of this to say that, yeah, this approach is is heavily rooted in luxury and maintaining an elevated voice and really keeping the brand story at the center of communication.

Jenny. Mhmm.

Can I ask a quick question?

Yeah. Because I didn’t realize it’s fascinating to me the different things that people have to work on in their job as a copywriter.

Hang tags, like, when you’re buying something? Hang tags. Yeah. Yeah.

What other weird things do you have to write?

Oh, gosh. No. No. Hang tags definitely. Also, the labels inside of the garments, like, that tell the story about the item. The hang tags, they will be, yeah, a little bit different. But Uh-huh.

Yeah. What what other things?

Anyway, I’m just gonna ask if anything comes to mind. I’m so curious about it.

Yeah. Yeah. No. That there’s always something, but yeah.

I’ll I’ll brainstorm.

Sorry. I’ll brainstorm a little more.

Yeah. Moving on to the drama theory component. So the dramatic arc. So this is a classical, yeah, picture that you would find in drama textbooks.

We’re not going word for word here, so it’s just meant to inspire us and see where we can go. But it’s, yeah. It it’s this classic arc where you start with the exhibition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. So the exhibition is all about laying the scene, doing the groundwork.

So you talk about the the location, the time, the mood, the characters, the relation, often also the hint of, like, a conflict or something that could turn into one. So it’s it’s a full on introduction into the brand world. Well, not the brand, the story world here. And then something happens that makes things more tense.

This is called the rising action if, like, you read Shakespeare or, like, know Hamlet. You know, that that moment when he realizes that, Claudius really killed his father, so things get tense and something is gonna happen.

And then you get to the climax, the the moment of, like, maximum tension where the conflict or the action peaks.

There’s no going back from here and then things start to fall.

So you have the falling action things that unfold in a manner that point to the final resolution. It it can’t go anywhere else. And then you have the actual resolution where things get wrapped up. The end, the grand finale, often dramatic, but luckily, in copywriting, it is not or not always.

So here we move on to the story selling arc, which is inspired by the former, but takes things, in a much lighter, more positive way, but also a very strategic way, which is important for for luxury copywriting.

So you see a couple of differences here.

The most notable, but one being the teaser as a start. So the teaser instead of the exhibition, you have the teaser. The teaser is the glimpse to what’s yet to come. It catches the interest, the curiosity.

It’s where you wanna show them something, and, yeah, start maintaining the the engagement.

Then from here, you come on to launch. So the launch is is really the main the main action. The launch is similar to the x x, position in the in the dramatic arc where everything gets laid out, the who, the what, the where, the why, and it’s arguably the most important communication, of a campaign.

So it requires the right words to underpin it. And then from here, you get onto the sustain phase. So the sustain phase is often flat, sometimes alongside with teasers as well. So but, yeah, I think that’s a sustain phase especially. Sustain is meant to maintain interest as the word suggests, especially if a campaign is played out over several weeks, if not months.

So you need to have something that is here to make people still be interested and engaged in your story.

And to wrap up, you have the recall at the end.

It’s something it can be something that reinforces the campaign into the reader’s minds or, yeah, just summarizes the main the main points of the campaign. And all of these will be played out differently depending on your campaign. So it can be that you forgot the teaser and you have just launch, sustain, recall, or you follow you follow just teaser, launch, and sustain. But, ideally, you would have that whole arc, so you have the maximum possibility of of engagement.

The teaser as alluded to is vague and intriguing. It’s here to whet the appetite for more. So language that’s often used is a first look, a first glimpse, very elegant, like the hint of something, coming soon, incoming, something, yeah, that wants you that that is here to make you want to learn more.

Examples for this, are here from Laura Piana, Pucci, and Romita Wilde.

So for the social example here, the first one, a glimpse of the fallwinter twenty twenty five, twenty six campaign. You see here the main work done is made in is in the in the first line, the introductory line, and then the rest is very is very top line, but it has enough to make you want to learn more about it.

The second example, Pucci, different tone, much more oomph.

Get ready to discover the fun the Pucci fanfare campaign coming soon, but also, a really good example of how to translate that into language. And then the last example is one for an email campaign from, a luxury beauty brand. Something big is coming two years in the making, launching. So you see it’s about planting that seed of interest that will ensure that people will watch out for more or come back for more.

In in maybe not so luxurious communication too, we often see, say stay tuned or, like, look out for more in a more, explicit way, but these are ways of making it more elevated.

Then you come onto the launch. So it’s all about setting the mood and the scene, a very grand opening. So you have language like presenting, unveiling, launching, introducing, unfolding, all these, like, very visual words that that make you see something, in front of your like, in the eye of your mind.

Like, something is really unfolding there, unraveling.

So examples here, again, from Laura Piana. The first one is their Herods of Wonder workshop.

The second one from the command that just launched today for winter. You see it’s all about it’s it’s very different campaigns, but it’s all about laying the scene with all the details of the campaign in a very grand manner.

And then the example here on Farfetch, presenting the Farfetch gift guide. So this is from a series of, from from their gifting series from a couple of years ago, actually. But I think it’s a good example of how to set, the right tone for for a campaign like this. This one did not have a teaser or anything because it doesn’t make sense, but it’s about making the first, gift communication the one that’s most impactful. I’ve just, copied over an excerpt of the campaign here. So the rest was all, about introduction to the the various categories, but it’s about giving the full picture of the campaign in the launch.

Then moving on to sustain. So this can be two ways. It can be either be it it can either be very benefit driven or driven by narrative that will heavily depend also on on the content, the story of the actual campaign. So it could be a deep dive into a product feature.

It could be an additional chapter in a campaign or just a focus, something that makes people want to learn more still at this stage because they’ve already, like, received quite a bit of communication.

So to translate that into examples.

Yeah. Here. Actually, let’s start with the Farfetch one. This is a a really good example of, like, a sustain element.

The one that I’ve shown you before was the launch and here the launch, setting the scene. And here, you have a focus point on one category, small small accents, small presents, bags, sneakers, jewels. It’s the excerpts that count. Scroll down to meet.

And then the other example here, Emma’s, effortless yet complex, discovered the second chapter of the women’s for winter twenty five campaign.

So this is created as part of a, like, a big story that’s divided up in chapters and is about telling now the next, the story of the next chapter.

And then finally, we come to recall.

So recall is about impregnating that it can be the the whole I the whole campaign into the reader’s mind. It can be either as a retrospective, so a wrap up or a final although I don’t like to think of it as a final, a final reason to believe.

So, again, this can be very product focused or just like a retrospective of the full campaign.

So a few examples here, from Laura Piana.

The first one, vast landscapes of volcanic terrain and earthy textures. The resort twenty twenty five collection culminates with a dramatic twist.

So, again, you see there’s nothing for this one here, there’s nothing commercial or so about it. The picture is very moody, and it’s just to to bring this campaign to a close.

And then the second one, a welcoming place where new connections are forged and goodbyes are hushed.

This, I think, is an interesting one for the end to yeah. The closing chapter to a campaign because it’s ambiguous, and it’s about opening doors and closing a door. So welcomes and goodbyes, but it’s also about, yeah, just planting that that idea into the reader’s mind and keeping keeping it open so they they naturally will be looking out for more. It it it’s a way to nurture brand love beyond the frame of the campaign.

So to recap, why why is this storytelling arc useful?

What is the benefit? So I think the most important one, as I’ve already hinted at, is to nurture interest, not only for the campaign, not only for one particular element of it, but throughout the whole of the campaign, which, I think is difficult to achieve with the amount of information that we receive day to day, to make readers feel engaged, maximize their engagement span throughout the entire campaign.

And then, ultimately, also and I think this is one of the most important points, actually, to marry storytelling with sales, sale priorities in a way that is very refined, sophisticated, and where it just makes sense. So it could be that well, the sustained phase, for example, of a campaign is so well suited for pulling out the different, yeah, features and such of, like, products if you wanna, like if it if it’s a product driven campaign. So you could go into detail on, I don’t know, on the craftsmanship and, like, the fibers of this very beautiful coat, you could tell people more about, the ingredients that went into, the making of this beauty product. So things like these. And it’s about seeing what makes, yeah, sense in a very strategic way.

Yeah. I think I think that’s the elegance of luxury copywriting, weaving in these commercial, priorities, the commercial language, in a way that makes sense and that feels intuitive. Because people want to they want to learn more. They want to know about these products. They, like, they pay thousands for them.

So you you just need to provide that information at the right, point.

And that leads me to questions.

Awesome. Thank you, Jenny.

Wicked. So it’s it’s such an interesting, difference from the sort of copy that a lot of us write as conversion copywriters where there’s just it just works so differently.

But it is it’s interesting to see the that arc, and then see how it comes to life because then I’m you know, there are things that you do that are just different from what Mhmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do.

So very cool.

This is the part of the call where if you have questions, please put up your hand as Caitlin and Abby just did. We’ll go in that order. As always, please start with a win.

So that’s how you get to ask a question. So whatever your win is of the week, of the month, of the year, whatever is feeling great right now, share it.

Caitlin, let’s start with you.

Who?

Go ahead. Hello.

Hi. Hello.

Okay. Awen, I started working with my brother. He’s had an online business for, like, fifteen years.

Wow.

So I’m doing some optimization stuff, and I’ve been wanting to get my hands on his business for a very long time. So, so that’s fun. So that’s my win. And so my question is, like, yes. I’m very much from the camp that Joe just explained. Like, I feel like I’m sitting in a brand new class at a brand new thing.

Yeah. But it was interesting too because, like, a lot of the stuff you highlighted, I’m like, oh, I’ve seen that, like, whether it was in an Instagram ad or an email or somewhere.

So so is it I’m just gonna try to, like, recap a little bit of, like, the approach of a campaign like this. Are the ingredients almost, like, for a a full campaign as you’re approaching it, you’re kind of thinking, in what way can I set, like, a vibe that feels luxury, that draws people in, and maybe that’s how you create some of the emails or some of the posts?

And then, like, other things are, like, you’re kinda picking out cool features of the product and then diving deep.

And I don’t know. That’s kinda what I’m gathering. So is that, like, accurate so far? Obviously, I’m missing a ton of things. Okay.

So that’s, like, the first half of the question. And then are you always driving them to the same page or, like, one product of the collection?

Like, where are people going to next and and, like, have you, like, intrigue them in these Yeah. Ways?

Yeah.

That’s that’s two brilliant questions.

So the first to answer the first one, it’s, so some of the works that I do with some of my clients, it’s done in close collaboration with marketing. So these are the things that I think if in this day and age somebody would want to, yeah, go out as a freelance luxury copywriter and really find a point of difference where we have AI and all of this and some, yeah, luxury brands even interested in this. I think it’s this strategic part that is absolutely crucial because it will make you stand out, and it will make you be there with a clear vision. You know? You you are you you know why you’re doing this. You’re not just, like, blindly writing to a brief, oh, this is the loan, so I need to use, like, some sort of presentation, ta da da, language. You’re here to help drive the campaign.

So does this answer your question?

Yeah. I think a little a little bit. I think just because this is so new for me, like, there’s a lot of blanks that probably need to be filled in for me. But, yeah, I guess I guess more so the question is, like, the pieces of a campaign because over like, I write for courses.

So, like, the pieces are okay. Cart open. Here’s the offer. And then we go into, like, handling objections.

Then we go into, like, emails that coach the decision for, like, indecisiveness.

So I’m trying to figure out what the translation is into, like, a product campaign of, like yeah. What that recipe looks like.

Yeah. Yeah. I think with that structure, depending on like, if you’re launching a new course or so, you you can you still have these same moments. Right? You have teaser moment. You have launch.

And then depending on how it pans out and how long the course is and all of that, you can weave in the other ones as well.

So it’s it’s I I would say it’s heavily, like, dependent on on the individual, factors of the campaign, But it’s it’s something that can be applied, I would say, universally across campaigns. Like, if people have the budget, the stage to make the product or the story really, like, the focus.

Yeah. Because this allows you to do that.

It does that.

No. It does. Yeah.

How long well, oh, I see a bunch of hands up, so I’m gonna zip it. Thank you. And someone else can go.

Awesome, Caitlin. Thanks, Caitlin. Abby, what’s your win?

I did post this in the Slack channel, but I I posted my first YouTube video, and I’m so proud because I’ve been putting it off so hard.

So, yeah, that’s my win.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. I also have more than one question, so I’ll ask one now and hopefully can go around again.

I wonder if you had any kind of thoughts or advice on, like, how to know if you’re telling the right story Mhmm. In in a campaign.

Okay.

So how it usually works with the sort of brands that I work with is we start at the very beginning of the journey, we start with an idea, and that idea will set the mood for everything. So, like, depending on where you’re coming in as a copywriter, if you come in from the very get go, like, concepting, thinking about what do I want to say, you’ll have like, you you’d be convinced from the very get go that this is the right story to tell. Whereas, if you’re coming in midway or so, you’re like, oh, but this is like this feels odd or, you know, you’re coming with a more biased mind. But if you this is a yeah. It’s a tricky question, but it’s also such an easy question because it’s all about the brand and the audience.

It’s about what what what about this brand that we want to say with this campaign in this particular moment? Like, if it’s backed up by by, like, a special shoots, like, what is the inspiration?

What’s does this tie back into heritage?

Does it, yeah, highlight something that’s that’s very typical of this brand. You know, it’s something that’s meant to transport the brand into not necessarily a new chapter, although with, like, large complaints, it can, but, like, it propels it forward.

Yeah. I think that would be my answer. Does this help?

Kinda. Yeah. I’ll need to run it over.

So Because it it at the end of the day, who who is there to make the decision about the story?

Sometimes so many people are, involved in it that in discussion, it just feels right. It feels you see, you nod and you’re like, oh, no. This this, like, feels so Gucci. This feels so poochy. Like, you know?

And it is also something that is there is no right or wrong at the end of the day.

It it’s about yeah.

I think finding that balance between what what what is your brand here to say, but then also the audience. What what why are they coming back to you? What what are they here to know, to where, why are they here, basically?

Mhmm.

Yeah. I know. That’s great. I guess I was wondering, like, is it is it when it just feels right?

Because that’s kind of my Yeah.

I think with with so many things in copywriting, like, there’s this this thing called the editorial instinct and, it it can mean everything and nothing, but I I I would go by that. Because if you compare your editorial instinct to the instinct of a marketeer or, like, somebody from a more, like, commercial background, things will start looking differently and then you’ll know, oh, no. This like, my instinct is is not the right one, but I think this is the one we should go by.

It it will feel right. And the more experience you get as well, the more exposure you have to different ways of thinking and, like, crafting ideas, which I think is ultimately what it’s about. Like, crafting ideas where, like, audience is here and brand is here and somewhere in the middle it meets.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Thank you, Jenny.

Thank you. Sabine, what’s your win and then your question, please?

Okay. So bearing in mind that I only joined last week, my first win is I’ve started writing my new job description, you know, before using my team as leverage and after using my team as leverage.

So it’s a first draft.

It will no no doubt will, transform. But, yeah, it’s good. It feels really good.

Jenny, I loved your presentation. I think, I recognize a lot of it, from my work with more kind of premium but not luxury brands. Yes. And that’s also what I wanted to ask you about. Yeah.

Where do you see the difference between premium and luxury?

Like, is there a difference in your, experience? And then maybe also with a view to collaborations, which Yeah. Quite quite a lot to make luxury brands more accessible.

Yeah.

How would you deal with that?

Because does the premium brand then upgrade their language under campaign treatment? Does the luxury brand downgrade it? Do both brands handle it the way they always do? Like, how would you approach that?

That’s a that’s a really interesting question.

So no. They would not sort of level out. I think for what what really makes a luxury brand is, like, the details.

So, like, the details in painstakingly, like, nuanced detail. Like, it’s incredible. It’s incredible.

They think about everything, like, from from, like, what what could even even, like, in their internal speak, they live the language of the brand. So it’s this deeply ingrained. So it’s about yeah. I think from a best copy perspective, it’s about following what what has worked for them for their brand, not being scared to, like, not follow the masses, but, like, crafting their own brand in a in an elevated way, but also in a way that does not feel aloof.

So it’s not about using all the fancy words, although with these sort of brands, there is I think because they are often also so culturally rooted, there is definitely a playground for that. And I think yeah. I think it’s justified.

But yeah. It’s about at the end of the day, it’s about making luxury feel more human and bringing that feeling, you know, where you just, like, go into the shop and say hi to that person there. You wanna replicate that person. They they it’s all in this digital world.

It it feels all, like, abstract, but at the end of the day, they’re talking to you But at least that’s what they’re trying to do. So, like yeah. I mean, MS, for example, they they use emojis on on their social. Like, others use, like, contractions and so on.

So it it’s about finding what what works for your brand to maintain their brand identity and, like, their status, but weaving these subtle, like not downgrades, but, like, sounding more familiar into the brand world.

And then for premium brands, to elevate them, I think they need to, yeah, start paying attention to the details, like, doing things properly, like, following following best practices. Because at the moment, probably, they might, yeah, they might be doing things wrong or not well enough. They might be sending, I don’t know, too many emails here and then do an calibrated campaign launch there, or there might be a grammar slip somewhere, because the person that signed off or or it hasn’t been signed off, like, the marketeer, like, just wrote the campaign, like, you know?

I think it it’s not universally true, but in my experience, it’s all about the details that that distinguishes, yeah, the higher level from the more mid mid level brands.

Does this answer your question?

Yes. It also makes it sound like the price tag is not the most important factor. It’s more about attitude rather than whether it’s five hundred pounds or five thousand pounds for an item.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it it’s about, making a person feel that they’re belonging to something at the end of the day. Like, making them part of, like, again, it’s like it’s this exclusivity versus, like, we versus you, but in in a in an I wanna say a more human and engaging way. So it it’s definitely very complex.

But yeah. No. The price tag I think also psychological studies and so have been done where if you present a product with a higher price tag to a person and a product with a lower price tag to a person, but, actually, these two products, made of the exact same material, which one would you think would be more luxurious?

The more expensive one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s psychological heavily rooted in psychological bias. Awesome.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Roxanna’s up next, but if you did have a second question for Jenny, feel free to put up your hand, and we’ll go through. Again, we still got some time. Roxanna, let’s start with your win.

So a win is something that depends only on me. Right? It’s not something that happened, or is it both?

It’s a thing you’re celebrating in life.

Okay. Yeah. So I’m celebrating that yesterday morning, my client woke up and said we haven’t worked in a while together. And she said that she was having a really cool morning, and she wanted me to be part of it. Oh.

So Nice. Yeah.

And then she shared with me her greatest achievements in the meantime, and then I pitched something.

And it was all that I was being sick in bed. So, you know Okay.

Good one.

Yeah. It’s alright. So, Jenny, I have a lot of questions, but just, you know, feel free to cherry pick. Okay? Whatever. So first of all, I’m curious about the length of the campaign because I think I heard you say that the sustained phase could last months, but maybe I was wrong.

Then I’m also curious looking at the posts that some have a certain length, and I wonder if this is something that you came up with with the brand. Is this something that you decided on your own? You know, because, we’re so, trained to look at, KPIs and numbers and what works. So I was wondering if you can share a bit of those in your work.

And then I was also curious how you get leads. You know? I mean, if you ever pitch yourself, they’re, they just happen to you, you know, I mean, just a bit of more substance there.

I’m just writing down, length of campaign and okay. So for the length of campaign, it really depends on well, if it’s like a large scale campaign, it can pan out over, like, one to two months. So that includes the the recall the sustained phase, but it’s interspersed by other activities, by other campaigns.

So, like, each phase is interspersed by, say, like, a BAU campaign or something that yeah. Just something else that happens that is of interest, like a small chapter in in the, yeah, in the brand, world.

For what was your first question again? Sorry. I’m asking.

So the first question was the length of the campaign. I think I think one or two months.

I wonder what the BAU campaign is because I’m not Ah, business as usual.

Like, something that they would, like, usually push. Like, it it can be very, like, trend or topic driven, but something that falls in a in a normal calendar.

Okay. And and then the second was about the length of the post.

Okay. So the length of the post, that will heavily depend on each client.

You’ll also see some of the examples I pulled out. Some are very short. Others are quite lengthy, which again, like, copy I think it it questions some of the the assumptions we have about copy. Oh, it should only be short. Oh, it should only be long. Ultimately, the question is what works for the brand?

So I think you should be guided for that. Like, do do people really wanna know more about the story behind it? Like, then we have the stage to tell that story.

And for your last question on leads, I actively pitch.

I use LinkedIn a lot, which has worked for me.

A website helps massively. I saw, yeah, massive conversions after setting it up.

And, yeah, I called Pitch.

So Oh, I wanna ask A lot of, unresponded answers, but amongst them, a few have yielded incredible results.

Please say more, if you care to. You know?

So well, I think the best way is to create a very tailored pitch.

Even now, like, because I’m so busy, I don’t have time to do that many as many as I would like. But it’s about creating a tailored pitch that speaks it it it can go two ways. It can go in in one way. Hey.

Hi. Ta da da. I’m I’m a freelance copywriter, doing this and that. I’ve worked with this and that person.

I would love to support you on this and that project. So being very specific helps, pulling out highlights on what you’ve worked on helps as well.

The second one would be identifying a problem.

So you see that their newsletters are not optimized. You see that, on social, like, they have weird formatting.

You see that, a campaign just doesn’t make sense. On on web, it says one thing. On newsletter’s another. And social, like, is not really there. You know, like, about critiquing, but in an empathetic way.

So they know that you’re coming with a good heart and, like, a willingness to help.

Awesome. Thank you. Sabine, you’re back. And because we’ve already heard a win, you don’t have to share it.

Thank you.

Yeah. Cool. So, Jenny, I don’t know how familiar you are with CopyHackers and CopySchool and all of those things, but I assume you kinda know that we often work very performance driven. Like, we wanna know how things are performing. There’s a lot of kind of focus on ecommerce or SaaS and other industries that are easy to measure for a lot of people, I guess, having been here for a week.

But I wonder in your work, you know, you’ve talked about campaigns. How do the more the more easily measured things kind of factor into it? Like, when you write an email campaign and you send people to an ecommerce solution, how does the PDP become part of the campaign, or is the PDP always the same, product detail page, PDP? Mhmm.

Is that something that you even work on, or is it typically something that your clients have a separate team for?

And then how does that work?

So I work on like, for some clients, I do, like, all of their copy.

So everything they they put out, that that would be things that have not been written by me because I only started, like, from working with them at, like, at one point in time. And, like, before that, there was already copy.

But, yeah, I think it’s about, depending on the client, it’s about seeing where you have influence and leveraging that area.

Very sadly for me, lots of, like, the metrics are not available to me, because of, yeah, the very high stakes, especially working with very high luxury brands. So I wish I would have more insights because then that would also yeah. That would help in other ways. I think if you put a number to something, it would yeah.

You know it.

So that’s one of the downsides.

But, yeah, the other part, it really depends on where you’re sitting.

Like, linking that whole that that could be a whole workshop on itself if it’s for a campaign like this. So some brands, they will link to, like, the the the product page for the specific campaign that’s been curated, and then also link to, like, the editorial page. So you have inspiration and product on one page.

Others will link to, like, the runway recap.

So you have it it it really depends on, like, the purpose and the send, I would say. So I can’t generalize, but it’s about what makes sense for this. And it sometimes it’s just like it is common sense because people try and overcomplicate it, but it’s just like, what does the what does the person want to know next? Like, so what?

You you’ve told them this. So what? Like, here’s here’s the visuals. Here’s, like, the story.

Here’s the product. You know?

Cool.

Abby?

Cool. Yeah. So I guess I’m, like, curious to hear more about how you package your services.

Mhmm.

If you wouldn’t mind sharing.

Yeah. So packaging, I think this is one of the possibly the downsize, possibly not, of luxury copywriting, but it’s very tailored.

It’s it’s a very curated world. So everything is, like, personalized and, you know, cherries on the top. So this is also, yeah, how my how my service are marketed and and packaged up. So some as I mentioned, I will I will write all of their communication. They have a fixed, there’s a fixed fee attached to that, a monthly retainer.

Others, I charge per project. So let’s say, there’s, like, one campaign with, like, a three sixty campaign that will have its fee with, like, yeah, the specifics, like, so and so many reworks or feedback loops. So So you have everything under control. I think that’s important to to, like, set your own terms.

Other clients, I charge by, touchpoint. So social or a social post or newsletter or a piece of web copy.

So they have my price list, and then, yeah, they say they want this and this and that this month.

And then, yeah, that that’s it, basically. So it’s not the most effective way, I think, for a freelancer because, like, there’s so much thought also that goes into, like, oh, yeah. How like, new client, new a new list possibly of rates because demands will vary, but it has worked, and helped me work with, like, these sort of top tier brands.

Cool. Thank you.

Okay. Roxanna.

So I was just I’m looking at your website. I love a lot of things there. So because I was like, oh my god. She said the website converts great. I wanna see why. So, I was curious about, whether you get to pick the visuals.

Basically, a bit more about how you’re briefed. So I have one client that is I mean, they’re obviously not a luxury brand, but they have some luxury products in their portfolio. Yeah. So and I’m always curious whether they brief you, they choose the visual, you have a choice, do you get to establish a calendar, do you not I mean and when you pitch, do you pitch the agency, do you pitch the client, how does that actually, so two things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for your images question, yeah, some well, a lot, if not all of these very large, luxury brands, they have a dedicated content team. So the content team will take care of all of that, which is fun, but it’s also not fun because sometimes you see something and it it just doesn’t go very well in terms of, like, the story flow. And then you’re thinking, why do I not have as much influence and sway Because this, I would really love to see differently, presented.

Other teams, smaller, more like boutique like premium brands, there’s lots of opportunity to get involved in, like, image selection as well, which is, super fun. But, yeah, unfortunately, the higher up you go, the more calibrated and controlled things get.

And then for your second question that was on remind me.

Oh, when you pitch, do you pitch the agency? Do you pitch the client?

Or do you No.

I would always pitch the client directly, because that means you can establish a like, you remove any third parties because that’s always awkward, and they’re gonna take a percentage for themselves.

And you get to, yeah, really establish a relationship with with the actual people, working there.

So yeah. And this it it can work with with cold pitching. You just, like it takes a lot of effort.

It takes a lot of, like, pitches that, like, will never be answered or looked at.

But out of the, I don’t know, two hundred or so, you might get ten replies and then, I don’t know, one or two clients might emerge from it. And that’s that’s a huge win in that case.

Mhmm. But since you’ve you’ve made I mean, if you have all these numbers, which is great, you probably have a process around the call pitching of it. Right?

Yeah. Yep. Mhmm.

Yeah. It’s very it’s very structured. So I I work two weekly targets. I have an assistant as well that helps with this. So some pitches, a number of these are are generic in nature. So it’s just it’s mainly for prospects where I don’t really have something that I could critique that well or, like, well, I don’t see very, very high conversion possibility, but just, like, to touch base with them. You know?

And historically also, well, people will remember you.

Some people will remember you. One of my most long standing clients, I reached out to them in, November twenty twenty four.

And there were it’s a different company, so I pitched them for that company as well. And then, you know, people say, oh, I’ll keep you in mind. And some mean it, but others don’t. But she meant it. And then three months later, she got in touch with another opportunity that, yeah, has yielded so so many results. So it’s about nurturing nurturing connections, I think, more than anything else, especially in luxury.

Okay. Thank you. I have more questions, but I’m gonna wait after Abby asks hers.

Amazing. Okay. Abby, you’re up.

Yeah. I feel really greedy asking three.

Yeah. So I hope you don’t mind me asking this. It’s just we because we’ve been having a lot of conversations about, AI and, like, the impact that it’s having. I would kind of think with luxury brands, they’re they’re gonna kind of continue to appreciate, like, the value of having that person there. I just wondered if, yeah, if you could share about kind of Yeah. Bossing and how you’re feeling.

Yeah. Yeah. So some some of my clients, they do bring in AI, but then I look at the copy and I’m like, no. It doesn’t work.

There’s nothing that works. I mean, it it can work to a certain extent, but where the question is really, oh, it’s not just about pretty words on the page. It’s about crafting a story around this certain vision that we have, and then, like, feedback loops. I don’t know.

Some clients because it they’re so high level. You have, like, six, seven, eight, nine feedback loops. And sometimes it’s just a little word or so. Others, it’s about the mood, or building on previous feedback, previous, previously established points.

So it’s it’s a very crafted process that I think AI could not replicate and then craft it not in the sense of, like, ultra polished, although the the copy is that. But I think AI is almost like it feels too polished to, like, out of soul possibly. You know? I also think from a, just a humanist perspective, what is the value in your brand story if you just, like, got it cheap?

People pay for the price, and I think luxury brands do too, with their words.

Yeah. And I think I think that’s where you are as I was asking because I I completely agree with everything you said. I was just wondering if, like, yeah, because it’s luxury Yeah.

There’s that feeling of, yeah, they want the luxury kind of brand copywriting experience.

Thank you.

Okay. Any last questions? Roxanna is back.

I mean, I can go on for a long time.

We’ve got a couple minutes.

So you I mean, I can I can also stop?

We’ll wrap up with this one. It’s perfect.

So two questions because I have a third one, but I’m gonna text you. Okay?

So because I I think I heard you say how you wish you had more feedback from the brand. And for instance, I also write for UNICEF. Right? And I didn’t get more data from them, but the truth is I don’t.

And just the way the organization is set up, and I do my very best, etcetera. You understand the point. So I am wondering, ultimately, how do you feel that you are being evaluated? Is it just their reaction that they think they like your work?

What KPIs do you have to meet? That would be question number one. Question number two, looking at your website, there’s this incredible portfolio of brands. But if someone was to, consider fashion, for instance, or luxury, not right now and, I mean, that’s someone being a friend.

So, and I I’ve never worked for any of the Chanel’s of the world, but, hey, why not? Because, you know, how would you consider I mean, what would you say other than just showing work? You know? Mhmm. And third, I will email because I know it’s going to kill me or something.

I’ll I’ll try to be brief. So for the second part, I think it’s all about your positioning.

You can break into, like, this world, but it’s all about how you position yourself. And sometimes well, a website is there to to sell your words, tell your story. So you can replicate that just in the storytelling that you use there.

So it’s it’s not showing through the brands that you’ve worked with, but it’s showing by doing it, basically.

And if it’s the right fit, it will convert.

For the KPIs, Yeah. And, unfortunately, not much data, but I think it’s yeah.

It’s the fact that I’ve continued to work with the clients, like, that they’ve they’ve been wanting me. They’ve been wanting me for longer. Like, contracts get renewed one month, three months, twelve months. You know?

Oh, can you help on this additional project?

They just see that you deliver on time, that you, are trustworthy, that you are responsive to feedback. It doesn’t it doesn’t take a lot, but it takes something which sometimes most people may not all exhibit or, like, replies are late or, yeah, grammar slips, you know, things like these. Even in, like, the the client communication. So it’s about maintaining well, echoing their language, back to them So you’re part of it.

But, yeah, it it mostly translates through client, contract renewals.

Sometimes they will give me a lovely feedback, and I’m like, yes.

And that’s that’s a win moment. But, yeah, ultimately, feedback does not lead to contract renewals because they need to show, oh, yeah. Like, she’s been doing brilliant work and, like, it’s driven our campaign forward. So that’s why we need additional budget, like, for the next quarter or so. You know? It’s yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. I feel like I’ve taken the most advantage of all bumps just as much as I could.

You’re in competition with Abby.

Just kidding.

Jenny, thank you for coming in and sharing with us and answering these questions today as well.

Where can people find you? LinkedIn? Is Instagram better? Where is the best place to follow-up with you or just follow you?

It’s it’s LinkedIn.

I’m building out exciting things, including an agency also in this space. So keep your eyes peeled.

Yes. And, yeah, do do feel free to, like, yeah, interact, engage with me.

Very happy to always share more.

Okay.

Fantastic. Again, thank you so much, and on behalf of everybody who’s going to watch the replay as well and couldn’t ask you a question, too bad for them. But thank you again, and thanks everyone. We’ll see you on Monday. Have a good one. Thanks, Jenny.

Thanks, y’all. Bye. Thanks, Jenny.

Worksheet

Storytelling Arc

Worksheet

Storytelling Arc

 

 

Transcript

Awesome. Okay. Cool.

So we’re gonna dive in right away here for everybody who’s just joined.

Jenny is in today. It’s five o’clock Jenny’s time, and it’s similar for a couple people in the room.

Yeah. So we’re talking about luxury brands, campaigns for them, basically working with them. If you have questions, we’ve got our usual twenty minutes up front where Jenny will be teaching, and then we’ll break into questions. So please have any questions that you’ve got written down ready to go. We’ll do the usual raise your hand, share a win, before you ask your question, and then we’ll we’ll, we’ll see when this wraps up. We’ll wrap up when we’re all out of questions, or when the hour is up.

Cool. Alright. So this is recording.

Jenny, welcome. We’re so glad to have you in today to share your insights here.

When you’re ready, feel free to start screen sharing or just dive right in. Yeah.

So the millennial question, are you all seeing my screen?

Yes. Yep.

Yeah. Perfect.

So yeah. So this presentation yeah. Welcome, first of all. This presentation was initially called the dramatic arc. And then as I, yeah, started preparing and so on, I realized, no. It needs to have a different angle. So it’s actually the store all about the story selling arc.

So you see, like, two components, story and selling here.

To run you through the contents so, yeah, first again, a couple of words about myself so you know where my approach is rooted in, then moving on the main meat of the presentation, what I call where drama theory meets copywriting, then all about the how, the examples, seeing things, applied, and, yeah, last but not least, the benefits. Why are we doing this? Why is it why is it useful? What will it bring us?

So yeah.

I initially started in house, at Farfetch now seven years ago.

And then in the midst of my journey, I I somehow found my way into freelancing, now doing it full time.

Scary transition, but totally worth worth it.

I have come, yeah, to work with some of the most notable luxury brands on this planet and, yeah, have been the voice to to their campaigns, writing everything from landscape campaigns that if you follow them, you probably have seen, to, like, crazy details like the hang tags, texts of in in exhibition halls. So very versatile background.

All of this to say that, yeah, this approach is is heavily rooted in luxury and maintaining an elevated voice and really keeping the brand story at the center of communication.

Jenny. Mhmm.

Can I ask a quick question?

Yeah. Because I didn’t realize it’s fascinating to me the different things that people have to work on in their job as a copywriter.

Hang tags, like, when you’re buying something? Hang tags. Yeah. Yeah.

What other weird things do you have to write?

Oh, gosh. No. No. Hang tags definitely. Also, the labels inside of the garments, like, that tell the story about the item. The hang tags, they will be, yeah, a little bit different. But Uh-huh.

Yeah. What what other things?

Anyway, I’m just gonna ask if anything comes to mind. I’m so curious about it.

Yeah. Yeah. No. That there’s always something, but yeah.

I’ll I’ll brainstorm.

Sorry. I’ll brainstorm a little more.

Yeah. Moving on to the drama theory component. So the dramatic arc. So this is a classical, yeah, picture that you would find in drama textbooks.

We’re not going word for word here, so it’s just meant to inspire us and see where we can go. But it’s, yeah. It it’s this classic arc where you start with the exhibition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. So the exhibition is all about laying the scene, doing the groundwork.

So you talk about the the location, the time, the mood, the characters, the relation, often also the hint of, like, a conflict or something that could turn into one. So it’s it’s a full on introduction into the brand world. Well, not the brand, the story world here. And then something happens that makes things more tense.

This is called the rising action if, like, you read Shakespeare or, like, know Hamlet. You know, that that moment when he realizes that, Claudius really killed his father, so things get tense and something is gonna happen.

And then you get to the climax, the the moment of, like, maximum tension where the conflict or the action peaks.

There’s no going back from here and then things start to fall.

So you have the falling action things that unfold in a manner that point to the final resolution. It it can’t go anywhere else. And then you have the actual resolution where things get wrapped up. The end, the grand finale, often dramatic, but luckily, in copywriting, it is not or not always.

So here we move on to the story selling arc, which is inspired by the former, but takes things, in a much lighter, more positive way, but also a very strategic way, which is important for for luxury copywriting.

So you see a couple of differences here.

The most notable, but one being the teaser as a start. So the teaser instead of the exhibition, you have the teaser. The teaser is the glimpse to what’s yet to come. It catches the interest, the curiosity.

It’s where you wanna show them something, and, yeah, start maintaining the the engagement.

Then from here, you come on to launch. So the launch is is really the main the main action. The launch is similar to the x x, position in the in the dramatic arc where everything gets laid out, the who, the what, the where, the why, and it’s arguably the most important communication, of a campaign.

So it requires the right words to underpin it. And then from here, you get onto the sustain phase. So the sustain phase is often flat, sometimes alongside with teasers as well. So but, yeah, I think that’s a sustain phase especially. Sustain is meant to maintain interest as the word suggests, especially if a campaign is played out over several weeks, if not months.

So you need to have something that is here to make people still be interested and engaged in your story.

And to wrap up, you have the recall at the end.

It’s something it can be something that reinforces the campaign into the reader’s minds or, yeah, just summarizes the main the main points of the campaign. And all of these will be played out differently depending on your campaign. So it can be that you forgot the teaser and you have just launch, sustain, recall, or you follow you follow just teaser, launch, and sustain. But, ideally, you would have that whole arc, so you have the maximum possibility of of engagement.

The teaser as alluded to is vague and intriguing. It’s here to whet the appetite for more. So language that’s often used is a first look, a first glimpse, very elegant, like the hint of something, coming soon, incoming, something, yeah, that wants you that that is here to make you want to learn more.

Examples for this, are here from Laura Piana, Pucci, and Romita Wilde.

So for the social example here, the first one, a glimpse of the fallwinter twenty twenty five, twenty six campaign. You see here the main work done is made in is in the in the first line, the introductory line, and then the rest is very is very top line, but it has enough to make you want to learn more about it.

The second example, Pucci, different tone, much more oomph.

Get ready to discover the fun the Pucci fanfare campaign coming soon, but also, a really good example of how to translate that into language. And then the last example is one for an email campaign from, a luxury beauty brand. Something big is coming two years in the making, launching. So you see it’s about planting that seed of interest that will ensure that people will watch out for more or come back for more.

In in maybe not so luxurious communication too, we often see, say stay tuned or, like, look out for more in a more, explicit way, but these are ways of making it more elevated.

Then you come onto the launch. So it’s all about setting the mood and the scene, a very grand opening. So you have language like presenting, unveiling, launching, introducing, unfolding, all these, like, very visual words that that make you see something, in front of your like, in the eye of your mind.

Like, something is really unfolding there, unraveling.

So examples here, again, from Laura Piana. The first one is their Herods of Wonder workshop.

The second one from the command that just launched today for winter. You see it’s all about it’s it’s very different campaigns, but it’s all about laying the scene with all the details of the campaign in a very grand manner.

And then the example here on Farfetch, presenting the Farfetch gift guide. So this is from a series of, from from their gifting series from a couple of years ago, actually. But I think it’s a good example of how to set, the right tone for for a campaign like this. This one did not have a teaser or anything because it doesn’t make sense, but it’s about making the first, gift communication the one that’s most impactful. I’ve just, copied over an excerpt of the campaign here. So the rest was all, about introduction to the the various categories, but it’s about giving the full picture of the campaign in the launch.

Then moving on to sustain. So this can be two ways. It can be either be it it can either be very benefit driven or driven by narrative that will heavily depend also on on the content, the story of the actual campaign. So it could be a deep dive into a product feature.

It could be an additional chapter in a campaign or just a focus, something that makes people want to learn more still at this stage because they’ve already, like, received quite a bit of communication.

So to translate that into examples.

Yeah. Here. Actually, let’s start with the Farfetch one. This is a a really good example of, like, a sustain element.

The one that I’ve shown you before was the launch and here the launch, setting the scene. And here, you have a focus point on one category, small small accents, small presents, bags, sneakers, jewels. It’s the excerpts that count. Scroll down to meet.

And then the other example here, Emma’s, effortless yet complex, discovered the second chapter of the women’s for winter twenty five campaign.

So this is created as part of a, like, a big story that’s divided up in chapters and is about telling now the next, the story of the next chapter.

And then finally, we come to recall.

So recall is about impregnating that it can be the the whole I the whole campaign into the reader’s mind. It can be either as a retrospective, so a wrap up or a final although I don’t like to think of it as a final, a final reason to believe.

So, again, this can be very product focused or just like a retrospective of the full campaign.

So a few examples here, from Laura Piana.

The first one, vast landscapes of volcanic terrain and earthy textures. The resort twenty twenty five collection culminates with a dramatic twist.

So, again, you see there’s nothing for this one here, there’s nothing commercial or so about it. The picture is very moody, and it’s just to to bring this campaign to a close.

And then the second one, a welcoming place where new connections are forged and goodbyes are hushed.

This, I think, is an interesting one for the end to yeah. The closing chapter to a campaign because it’s ambiguous, and it’s about opening doors and closing a door. So welcomes and goodbyes, but it’s also about, yeah, just planting that that idea into the reader’s mind and keeping keeping it open so they they naturally will be looking out for more. It it it’s a way to nurture brand love beyond the frame of the campaign.

So to recap, why why is this storytelling arc useful?

What is the benefit? So I think the most important one, as I’ve already hinted at, is to nurture interest, not only for the campaign, not only for one particular element of it, but throughout the whole of the campaign, which, I think is difficult to achieve with the amount of information that we receive day to day, to make readers feel engaged, maximize their engagement span throughout the entire campaign.

And then, ultimately, also and I think this is one of the most important points, actually, to marry storytelling with sales, sale priorities in a way that is very refined, sophisticated, and where it just makes sense. So it could be that well, the sustained phase, for example, of a campaign is so well suited for pulling out the different, yeah, features and such of, like, products if you wanna, like if it if it’s a product driven campaign. So you could go into detail on, I don’t know, on the craftsmanship and, like, the fibers of this very beautiful coat, you could tell people more about, the ingredients that went into, the making of this beauty product. So things like these. And it’s about seeing what makes, yeah, sense in a very strategic way.

Yeah. I think I think that’s the elegance of luxury copywriting, weaving in these commercial, priorities, the commercial language, in a way that makes sense and that feels intuitive. Because people want to they want to learn more. They want to know about these products. They, like, they pay thousands for them.

So you you just need to provide that information at the right, point.

And that leads me to questions.

Awesome. Thank you, Jenny.

Wicked. So it’s it’s such an interesting, difference from the sort of copy that a lot of us write as conversion copywriters where there’s just it just works so differently.

But it is it’s interesting to see the that arc, and then see how it comes to life because then I’m you know, there are things that you do that are just different from what Mhmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do.

So very cool.

This is the part of the call where if you have questions, please put up your hand as Caitlin and Abby just did. We’ll go in that order. As always, please start with a win.

So that’s how you get to ask a question. So whatever your win is of the week, of the month, of the year, whatever is feeling great right now, share it.

Caitlin, let’s start with you.

Who?

Go ahead. Hello.

Hi. Hello.

Okay. Awen, I started working with my brother. He’s had an online business for, like, fifteen years.

Wow.

So I’m doing some optimization stuff, and I’ve been wanting to get my hands on his business for a very long time. So, so that’s fun. So that’s my win. And so my question is, like, yes. I’m very much from the camp that Joe just explained. Like, I feel like I’m sitting in a brand new class at a brand new thing.

Yeah. But it was interesting too because, like, a lot of the stuff you highlighted, I’m like, oh, I’ve seen that, like, whether it was in an Instagram ad or an email or somewhere.

So so is it I’m just gonna try to, like, recap a little bit of, like, the approach of a campaign like this. Are the ingredients almost, like, for a a full campaign as you’re approaching it, you’re kind of thinking, in what way can I set, like, a vibe that feels luxury, that draws people in, and maybe that’s how you create some of the emails or some of the posts?

And then, like, other things are, like, you’re kinda picking out cool features of the product and then diving deep.

And I don’t know. That’s kinda what I’m gathering. So is that, like, accurate so far? Obviously, I’m missing a ton of things. Okay.

So that’s, like, the first half of the question. And then are you always driving them to the same page or, like, one product of the collection?

Like, where are people going to next and and, like, have you, like, intrigue them in these Yeah. Ways?

Yeah.

That’s that’s two brilliant questions.

So the first to answer the first one, it’s, so some of the works that I do with some of my clients, it’s done in close collaboration with marketing. So these are the things that I think if in this day and age somebody would want to, yeah, go out as a freelance luxury copywriter and really find a point of difference where we have AI and all of this and some, yeah, luxury brands even interested in this. I think it’s this strategic part that is absolutely crucial because it will make you stand out, and it will make you be there with a clear vision. You know? You you are you you know why you’re doing this. You’re not just, like, blindly writing to a brief, oh, this is the loan, so I need to use, like, some sort of presentation, ta da da, language. You’re here to help drive the campaign.

So does this answer your question?

Yeah. I think a little a little bit. I think just because this is so new for me, like, there’s a lot of blanks that probably need to be filled in for me. But, yeah, I guess I guess more so the question is, like, the pieces of a campaign because over like, I write for courses.

So, like, the pieces are okay. Cart open. Here’s the offer. And then we go into, like, handling objections.

Then we go into, like, emails that coach the decision for, like, indecisiveness.

So I’m trying to figure out what the translation is into, like, a product campaign of, like yeah. What that recipe looks like.

Yeah. Yeah. I think with that structure, depending on like, if you’re launching a new course or so, you you can you still have these same moments. Right? You have teaser moment. You have launch.

And then depending on how it pans out and how long the course is and all of that, you can weave in the other ones as well.

So it’s it’s I I would say it’s heavily, like, dependent on on the individual, factors of the campaign, But it’s it’s something that can be applied, I would say, universally across campaigns. Like, if people have the budget, the stage to make the product or the story really, like, the focus.

Yeah. Because this allows you to do that.

It does that.

No. It does. Yeah.

How long well, oh, I see a bunch of hands up, so I’m gonna zip it. Thank you. And someone else can go.

Awesome, Caitlin. Thanks, Caitlin. Abby, what’s your win?

I did post this in the Slack channel, but I I posted my first YouTube video, and I’m so proud because I’ve been putting it off so hard.

So, yeah, that’s my win.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. I also have more than one question, so I’ll ask one now and hopefully can go around again.

I wonder if you had any kind of thoughts or advice on, like, how to know if you’re telling the right story Mhmm. In in a campaign.

Okay.

So how it usually works with the sort of brands that I work with is we start at the very beginning of the journey, we start with an idea, and that idea will set the mood for everything. So, like, depending on where you’re coming in as a copywriter, if you come in from the very get go, like, concepting, thinking about what do I want to say, you’ll have like, you you’d be convinced from the very get go that this is the right story to tell. Whereas, if you’re coming in midway or so, you’re like, oh, but this is like this feels odd or, you know, you’re coming with a more biased mind. But if you this is a yeah. It’s a tricky question, but it’s also such an easy question because it’s all about the brand and the audience.

It’s about what what what about this brand that we want to say with this campaign in this particular moment? Like, if it’s backed up by by, like, a special shoots, like, what is the inspiration?

What’s does this tie back into heritage?

Does it, yeah, highlight something that’s that’s very typical of this brand. You know, it’s something that’s meant to transport the brand into not necessarily a new chapter, although with, like, large complaints, it can, but, like, it propels it forward.

Yeah. I think that would be my answer. Does this help?

Kinda. Yeah. I’ll need to run it over.

So Because it it at the end of the day, who who is there to make the decision about the story?

Sometimes so many people are, involved in it that in discussion, it just feels right. It feels you see, you nod and you’re like, oh, no. This this, like, feels so Gucci. This feels so poochy. Like, you know?

And it is also something that is there is no right or wrong at the end of the day.

It it’s about yeah.

I think finding that balance between what what what is your brand here to say, but then also the audience. What what why are they coming back to you? What what are they here to know, to where, why are they here, basically?

Mhmm.

Yeah. I know. That’s great. I guess I was wondering, like, is it is it when it just feels right?

Because that’s kind of my Yeah.

I think with with so many things in copywriting, like, there’s this this thing called the editorial instinct and, it it can mean everything and nothing, but I I I would go by that. Because if you compare your editorial instinct to the instinct of a marketeer or, like, somebody from a more, like, commercial background, things will start looking differently and then you’ll know, oh, no. This like, my instinct is is not the right one, but I think this is the one we should go by.

It it will feel right. And the more experience you get as well, the more exposure you have to different ways of thinking and, like, crafting ideas, which I think is ultimately what it’s about. Like, crafting ideas where, like, audience is here and brand is here and somewhere in the middle it meets.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Thank you, Jenny.

Thank you. Sabine, what’s your win and then your question, please?

Okay. So bearing in mind that I only joined last week, my first win is I’ve started writing my new job description, you know, before using my team as leverage and after using my team as leverage.

So it’s a first draft.

It will no no doubt will, transform. But, yeah, it’s good. It feels really good.

Jenny, I loved your presentation. I think, I recognize a lot of it, from my work with more kind of premium but not luxury brands. Yes. And that’s also what I wanted to ask you about. Yeah.

Where do you see the difference between premium and luxury?

Like, is there a difference in your, experience? And then maybe also with a view to collaborations, which Yeah. Quite quite a lot to make luxury brands more accessible.

Yeah.

How would you deal with that?

Because does the premium brand then upgrade their language under campaign treatment? Does the luxury brand downgrade it? Do both brands handle it the way they always do? Like, how would you approach that?

That’s a that’s a really interesting question.

So no. They would not sort of level out. I think for what what really makes a luxury brand is, like, the details.

So, like, the details in painstakingly, like, nuanced detail. Like, it’s incredible. It’s incredible.

They think about everything, like, from from, like, what what could even even, like, in their internal speak, they live the language of the brand. So it’s this deeply ingrained. So it’s about yeah. I think from a best copy perspective, it’s about following what what has worked for them for their brand, not being scared to, like, not follow the masses, but, like, crafting their own brand in a in an elevated way, but also in a way that does not feel aloof.

So it’s not about using all the fancy words, although with these sort of brands, there is I think because they are often also so culturally rooted, there is definitely a playground for that. And I think yeah. I think it’s justified.

But yeah. It’s about at the end of the day, it’s about making luxury feel more human and bringing that feeling, you know, where you just, like, go into the shop and say hi to that person there. You wanna replicate that person. They they it’s all in this digital world.

It it feels all, like, abstract, but at the end of the day, they’re talking to you But at least that’s what they’re trying to do. So, like yeah. I mean, MS, for example, they they use emojis on on their social. Like, others use, like, contractions and so on.

So it it’s about finding what what works for your brand to maintain their brand identity and, like, their status, but weaving these subtle, like not downgrades, but, like, sounding more familiar into the brand world.

And then for premium brands, to elevate them, I think they need to, yeah, start paying attention to the details, like, doing things properly, like, following following best practices. Because at the moment, probably, they might, yeah, they might be doing things wrong or not well enough. They might be sending, I don’t know, too many emails here and then do an calibrated campaign launch there, or there might be a grammar slip somewhere, because the person that signed off or or it hasn’t been signed off, like, the marketeer, like, just wrote the campaign, like, you know?

I think it it’s not universally true, but in my experience, it’s all about the details that that distinguishes, yeah, the higher level from the more mid mid level brands.

Does this answer your question?

Yes. It also makes it sound like the price tag is not the most important factor. It’s more about attitude rather than whether it’s five hundred pounds or five thousand pounds for an item.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it it’s about, making a person feel that they’re belonging to something at the end of the day. Like, making them part of, like, again, it’s like it’s this exclusivity versus, like, we versus you, but in in a in an I wanna say a more human and engaging way. So it it’s definitely very complex.

But yeah. No. The price tag I think also psychological studies and so have been done where if you present a product with a higher price tag to a person and a product with a lower price tag to a person, but, actually, these two products, made of the exact same material, which one would you think would be more luxurious?

The more expensive one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s psychological heavily rooted in psychological bias. Awesome.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Roxanna’s up next, but if you did have a second question for Jenny, feel free to put up your hand, and we’ll go through. Again, we still got some time. Roxanna, let’s start with your win.

So a win is something that depends only on me. Right? It’s not something that happened, or is it both?

It’s a thing you’re celebrating in life.

Okay. Yeah. So I’m celebrating that yesterday morning, my client woke up and said we haven’t worked in a while together. And she said that she was having a really cool morning, and she wanted me to be part of it. Oh.

So Nice. Yeah.

And then she shared with me her greatest achievements in the meantime, and then I pitched something.

And it was all that I was being sick in bed. So, you know Okay.

Good one.

Yeah. It’s alright. So, Jenny, I have a lot of questions, but just, you know, feel free to cherry pick. Okay? Whatever. So first of all, I’m curious about the length of the campaign because I think I heard you say that the sustained phase could last months, but maybe I was wrong.

Then I’m also curious looking at the posts that some have a certain length, and I wonder if this is something that you came up with with the brand. Is this something that you decided on your own? You know, because, we’re so, trained to look at, KPIs and numbers and what works. So I was wondering if you can share a bit of those in your work.

And then I was also curious how you get leads. You know? I mean, if you ever pitch yourself, they’re, they just happen to you, you know, I mean, just a bit of more substance there.

I’m just writing down, length of campaign and okay. So for the length of campaign, it really depends on well, if it’s like a large scale campaign, it can pan out over, like, one to two months. So that includes the the recall the sustained phase, but it’s interspersed by other activities, by other campaigns.

So, like, each phase is interspersed by, say, like, a BAU campaign or something that yeah. Just something else that happens that is of interest, like a small chapter in in the, yeah, in the brand, world.

For what was your first question again? Sorry. I’m asking.

So the first question was the length of the campaign. I think I think one or two months.

I wonder what the BAU campaign is because I’m not Ah, business as usual.

Like, something that they would, like, usually push. Like, it it can be very, like, trend or topic driven, but something that falls in a in a normal calendar.

Okay. And and then the second was about the length of the post.

Okay. So the length of the post, that will heavily depend on each client.

You’ll also see some of the examples I pulled out. Some are very short. Others are quite lengthy, which again, like, copy I think it it questions some of the the assumptions we have about copy. Oh, it should only be short. Oh, it should only be long. Ultimately, the question is what works for the brand?

So I think you should be guided for that. Like, do do people really wanna know more about the story behind it? Like, then we have the stage to tell that story.

And for your last question on leads, I actively pitch.

I use LinkedIn a lot, which has worked for me.

A website helps massively. I saw, yeah, massive conversions after setting it up.

And, yeah, I called Pitch.

So Oh, I wanna ask A lot of, unresponded answers, but amongst them, a few have yielded incredible results.

Please say more, if you care to. You know?

So well, I think the best way is to create a very tailored pitch.

Even now, like, because I’m so busy, I don’t have time to do that many as many as I would like. But it’s about creating a tailored pitch that speaks it it it can go two ways. It can go in in one way. Hey.

Hi. Ta da da. I’m I’m a freelance copywriter, doing this and that. I’ve worked with this and that person.

I would love to support you on this and that project. So being very specific helps, pulling out highlights on what you’ve worked on helps as well.

The second one would be identifying a problem.

So you see that their newsletters are not optimized. You see that, on social, like, they have weird formatting.

You see that, a campaign just doesn’t make sense. On on web, it says one thing. On newsletter’s another. And social, like, is not really there. You know, like, about critiquing, but in an empathetic way.

So they know that you’re coming with a good heart and, like, a willingness to help.

Awesome. Thank you. Sabine, you’re back. And because we’ve already heard a win, you don’t have to share it.

Thank you.

Yeah. Cool. So, Jenny, I don’t know how familiar you are with CopyHackers and CopySchool and all of those things, but I assume you kinda know that we often work very performance driven. Like, we wanna know how things are performing. There’s a lot of kind of focus on ecommerce or SaaS and other industries that are easy to measure for a lot of people, I guess, having been here for a week.

But I wonder in your work, you know, you’ve talked about campaigns. How do the more the more easily measured things kind of factor into it? Like, when you write an email campaign and you send people to an ecommerce solution, how does the PDP become part of the campaign, or is the PDP always the same, product detail page, PDP? Mhmm.

Is that something that you even work on, or is it typically something that your clients have a separate team for?

And then how does that work?

So I work on like, for some clients, I do, like, all of their copy.

So everything they they put out, that that would be things that have not been written by me because I only started, like, from working with them at, like, at one point in time. And, like, before that, there was already copy.

But, yeah, I think it’s about, depending on the client, it’s about seeing where you have influence and leveraging that area.

Very sadly for me, lots of, like, the metrics are not available to me, because of, yeah, the very high stakes, especially working with very high luxury brands. So I wish I would have more insights because then that would also yeah. That would help in other ways. I think if you put a number to something, it would yeah.

You know it.

So that’s one of the downsides.

But, yeah, the other part, it really depends on where you’re sitting.

Like, linking that whole that that could be a whole workshop on itself if it’s for a campaign like this. So some brands, they will link to, like, the the the product page for the specific campaign that’s been curated, and then also link to, like, the editorial page. So you have inspiration and product on one page.

Others will link to, like, the runway recap.

So you have it it it really depends on, like, the purpose and the send, I would say. So I can’t generalize, but it’s about what makes sense for this. And it sometimes it’s just like it is common sense because people try and overcomplicate it, but it’s just like, what does the what does the person want to know next? Like, so what?

You you’ve told them this. So what? Like, here’s here’s the visuals. Here’s, like, the story.

Here’s the product. You know?

Cool.

Abby?

Cool. Yeah. So I guess I’m, like, curious to hear more about how you package your services.

Mhmm.

If you wouldn’t mind sharing.

Yeah. So packaging, I think this is one of the possibly the downsize, possibly not, of luxury copywriting, but it’s very tailored.

It’s it’s a very curated world. So everything is, like, personalized and, you know, cherries on the top. So this is also, yeah, how my how my service are marketed and and packaged up. So some as I mentioned, I will I will write all of their communication. They have a fixed, there’s a fixed fee attached to that, a monthly retainer.

Others, I charge per project. So let’s say, there’s, like, one campaign with, like, a three sixty campaign that will have its fee with, like, yeah, the specifics, like, so and so many reworks or feedback loops. So So you have everything under control. I think that’s important to to, like, set your own terms.

Other clients, I charge by, touchpoint. So social or a social post or newsletter or a piece of web copy.

So they have my price list, and then, yeah, they say they want this and this and that this month.

And then, yeah, that that’s it, basically. So it’s not the most effective way, I think, for a freelancer because, like, there’s so much thought also that goes into, like, oh, yeah. How like, new client, new a new list possibly of rates because demands will vary, but it has worked, and helped me work with, like, these sort of top tier brands.

Cool. Thank you.

Okay. Roxanna.

So I was just I’m looking at your website. I love a lot of things there. So because I was like, oh my god. She said the website converts great. I wanna see why. So, I was curious about, whether you get to pick the visuals.

Basically, a bit more about how you’re briefed. So I have one client that is I mean, they’re obviously not a luxury brand, but they have some luxury products in their portfolio. Yeah. So and I’m always curious whether they brief you, they choose the visual, you have a choice, do you get to establish a calendar, do you not I mean and when you pitch, do you pitch the agency, do you pitch the client, how does that actually, so two things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for your images question, yeah, some well, a lot, if not all of these very large, luxury brands, they have a dedicated content team. So the content team will take care of all of that, which is fun, but it’s also not fun because sometimes you see something and it it just doesn’t go very well in terms of, like, the story flow. And then you’re thinking, why do I not have as much influence and sway Because this, I would really love to see differently, presented.

Other teams, smaller, more like boutique like premium brands, there’s lots of opportunity to get involved in, like, image selection as well, which is, super fun. But, yeah, unfortunately, the higher up you go, the more calibrated and controlled things get.

And then for your second question that was on remind me.

Oh, when you pitch, do you pitch the agency? Do you pitch the client?

Or do you No.

I would always pitch the client directly, because that means you can establish a like, you remove any third parties because that’s always awkward, and they’re gonna take a percentage for themselves.

And you get to, yeah, really establish a relationship with with the actual people, working there.

So yeah. And this it it can work with with cold pitching. You just, like it takes a lot of effort.

It takes a lot of, like, pitches that, like, will never be answered or looked at.

But out of the, I don’t know, two hundred or so, you might get ten replies and then, I don’t know, one or two clients might emerge from it. And that’s that’s a huge win in that case.

Mhmm. But since you’ve you’ve made I mean, if you have all these numbers, which is great, you probably have a process around the call pitching of it. Right?

Yeah. Yep. Mhmm.

Yeah. It’s very it’s very structured. So I I work two weekly targets. I have an assistant as well that helps with this. So some pitches, a number of these are are generic in nature. So it’s just it’s mainly for prospects where I don’t really have something that I could critique that well or, like, well, I don’t see very, very high conversion possibility, but just, like, to touch base with them. You know?

And historically also, well, people will remember you.

Some people will remember you. One of my most long standing clients, I reached out to them in, November twenty twenty four.

And there were it’s a different company, so I pitched them for that company as well. And then, you know, people say, oh, I’ll keep you in mind. And some mean it, but others don’t. But she meant it. And then three months later, she got in touch with another opportunity that, yeah, has yielded so so many results. So it’s about nurturing nurturing connections, I think, more than anything else, especially in luxury.

Okay. Thank you. I have more questions, but I’m gonna wait after Abby asks hers.

Amazing. Okay. Abby, you’re up.

Yeah. I feel really greedy asking three.

Yeah. So I hope you don’t mind me asking this. It’s just we because we’ve been having a lot of conversations about, AI and, like, the impact that it’s having. I would kind of think with luxury brands, they’re they’re gonna kind of continue to appreciate, like, the value of having that person there. I just wondered if, yeah, if you could share about kind of Yeah. Bossing and how you’re feeling.

Yeah. Yeah. So some some of my clients, they do bring in AI, but then I look at the copy and I’m like, no. It doesn’t work.

There’s nothing that works. I mean, it it can work to a certain extent, but where the question is really, oh, it’s not just about pretty words on the page. It’s about crafting a story around this certain vision that we have, and then, like, feedback loops. I don’t know.

Some clients because it they’re so high level. You have, like, six, seven, eight, nine feedback loops. And sometimes it’s just a little word or so. Others, it’s about the mood, or building on previous feedback, previous, previously established points.

So it’s it’s a very crafted process that I think AI could not replicate and then craft it not in the sense of, like, ultra polished, although the the copy is that. But I think AI is almost like it feels too polished to, like, out of soul possibly. You know? I also think from a, just a humanist perspective, what is the value in your brand story if you just, like, got it cheap?

People pay for the price, and I think luxury brands do too, with their words.

Yeah. And I think I think that’s where you are as I was asking because I I completely agree with everything you said. I was just wondering if, like, yeah, because it’s luxury Yeah.

There’s that feeling of, yeah, they want the luxury kind of brand copywriting experience.

Thank you.

Okay. Any last questions? Roxanna is back.

I mean, I can go on for a long time.

We’ve got a couple minutes.

So you I mean, I can I can also stop?

We’ll wrap up with this one. It’s perfect.

So two questions because I have a third one, but I’m gonna text you. Okay?

So because I I think I heard you say how you wish you had more feedback from the brand. And for instance, I also write for UNICEF. Right? And I didn’t get more data from them, but the truth is I don’t.

And just the way the organization is set up, and I do my very best, etcetera. You understand the point. So I am wondering, ultimately, how do you feel that you are being evaluated? Is it just their reaction that they think they like your work?

What KPIs do you have to meet? That would be question number one. Question number two, looking at your website, there’s this incredible portfolio of brands. But if someone was to, consider fashion, for instance, or luxury, not right now and, I mean, that’s someone being a friend.

So, and I I’ve never worked for any of the Chanel’s of the world, but, hey, why not? Because, you know, how would you consider I mean, what would you say other than just showing work? You know? Mhmm. And third, I will email because I know it’s going to kill me or something.

I’ll I’ll try to be brief. So for the second part, I think it’s all about your positioning.

You can break into, like, this world, but it’s all about how you position yourself. And sometimes well, a website is there to to sell your words, tell your story. So you can replicate that just in the storytelling that you use there.

So it’s it’s not showing through the brands that you’ve worked with, but it’s showing by doing it, basically.

And if it’s the right fit, it will convert.

For the KPIs, Yeah. And, unfortunately, not much data, but I think it’s yeah.

It’s the fact that I’ve continued to work with the clients, like, that they’ve they’ve been wanting me. They’ve been wanting me for longer. Like, contracts get renewed one month, three months, twelve months. You know?

Oh, can you help on this additional project?

They just see that you deliver on time, that you, are trustworthy, that you are responsive to feedback. It doesn’t it doesn’t take a lot, but it takes something which sometimes most people may not all exhibit or, like, replies are late or, yeah, grammar slips, you know, things like these. Even in, like, the the client communication. So it’s about maintaining well, echoing their language, back to them So you’re part of it.

But, yeah, it it mostly translates through client, contract renewals.

Sometimes they will give me a lovely feedback, and I’m like, yes.

And that’s that’s a win moment. But, yeah, ultimately, feedback does not lead to contract renewals because they need to show, oh, yeah. Like, she’s been doing brilliant work and, like, it’s driven our campaign forward. So that’s why we need additional budget, like, for the next quarter or so. You know? It’s yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. I feel like I’ve taken the most advantage of all bumps just as much as I could.

You’re in competition with Abby.

Just kidding.

Jenny, thank you for coming in and sharing with us and answering these questions today as well.

Where can people find you? LinkedIn? Is Instagram better? Where is the best place to follow-up with you or just follow you?

It’s it’s LinkedIn.

I’m building out exciting things, including an agency also in this space. So keep your eyes peeled.

Yes. And, yeah, do do feel free to, like, yeah, interact, engage with me.

Very happy to always share more.

Okay.

Fantastic. Again, thank you so much, and on behalf of everybody who’s going to watch the replay as well and couldn’t ask you a question, too bad for them. But thank you again, and thanks everyone. We’ll see you on Monday. Have a good one. Thanks, Jenny.

Thanks, y’all. Bye. Thanks, Jenny.

MY IRL Funnel

My IRL Funnel

Transcript

Welcome. I know people are still filing in.

But today is our kickoff for the summer of big things where today, every week, we’re gonna focus on just one thing that a person might be working on. So if it’s not a thing you’re working on now, you might work on it later. Still a good use of your time. If you, however, don’t have a question today and you are not planning on doing anything with today’s subject, which is having an IRL funnel. Basically, what happens when you’re in real life with a person and you could be connected with them. You could turn them into a client or at least somebody could workshop with, partner with something.

If you don’t leave your house, if that’s not a thing you ever plan on doing then and you don’t have a question then you can take an hour back. Go work on your business instead of spending time here.

Otherwise, if you have a question or you just wanna be here around people and you’re like, I might not have a question, but someone else will have a question and I’m gonna catch something good out of that. Cool. Not trying to ask anybody to leave, but if you’re busy, work comes, absolutely first.

Awesome. Alright. So today, we are talking about your IRL funnel. What is that? That is just as I mentioned, it’s the thing that you have set up for when you are going out into the world and actually talking to people.

So Jess Haney, I know this is something that you are doing actively and others hopefully will too, because getting out there, networking, and even if you’re not speaking on a stage, which this funnel today isn’t about. It’s not like, hey. I’m getting on stage, and I need to know what to do. That can work with what we’re talking about today, but it’s like a different thing, and we can talk about that more.

And we will talk about that, I think, later this month, when we’re talking about getting invited onto stages, not to podcasts.

That happens, yes, in oh, yeah. Next Monday. Perfect.

So it’ll piggyback well off this. So this is hey. I’m going to an event. It’s a trade show for people in my industry.

I know Sarah and I were at an event in New York a couple weeks ago for something unrelated, but it was still for business.

We were looking around going like why don’t we have copy hackers cards that we’re just like throwing on every table like everybody here needs what we do.

So it’s good to be ready for those moments. Right? And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. So something to think about as, you know, if you’re like, you know, I don’t think I’m going to do IRL stuff. One, if you don’t like leaving your house, that’s fair.

I get it. A lot of us are introverts and some of us, though, are, like, kind of both. Right? Like, you think you’re an introvert, it feels safe there, but when you’re out in public, you actually perform pretty well.

It’s just exhausting for you, which is how I feel about it. So it can be good to force yourself out there because there’s a lot of good stuff that comes of it. But as part of the discussion that we’re going to have and what I want you to think about as you’re resisting the idea maybe of going and doing in real life IRL networking, Why aren’t you doing this? What’s stopping you other than maybe even like lightweight crap?

Like, not heavy stuff, like, you might feel safer being in your house. There’s less risk that you’ll interact with somebody and not want to and have awkward conversations or be forced to make small talk and then learn how to make small talk that doesn’t suck. But like if if it’s just a small thing holding you back, if it’s not like a significant thing, then maybe it’s time to think about getting out there, getting out of your space particularly since real people are out there networking. People who are serious about their business typically go out and want to meet other people in order to, like, get insights and help grow their business.

So, there’s a lot to be said for being that person in the room who is the copywriter in the room of business people.

So for food for thought is if your business development efforts don’t include attending events with prospective clients, why not? For real, why not? Really ask yourself that. Ask each other that.

And, of course, they’re not perfect for everybody, but who are they right for? If not you, who do you think these events are right for? Who goes there and does so successfully?

Are other copywriters already going? If not, why not? If so, why? And are they maybe eating up some of the business that you could and should have?

And I say copywriters and I I I mean everybody in the room whether you’re a copywriter or not. Okay. So if you’re in our workbook, we are currently on page nineteen. I will share my screen, but I don’t wanna spend too much time screen sharing.

Just go to the workbook. It’s called CSP summer twenty twenty five. Big things plus q three goal setting. We’re in the first month of this two month phase.

Plan on a page for a funnel is what we’re going to talk about. Again, lightly.

If you are doing this, what I’m talking about today, if this is your big thing for the summer, I don’t expect that you’ll set it all up today. So most of the time when we’re working on, like, workbooks for the week, you could do the thing same day. Like, you could block out three hours and get it done. This is a bigger thing that’s gonna take some more time.

Not a ton of time, but it’s a good thing to chip away at over the course of the next month, six weeks, seven weeks, maybe don’t leave it for eight weeks. That’s probably taking a little too long with the thing just because you have eight weeks doesn’t mean you have to expand the work to the size of eight weeks. You could get it done in very few hours. Okay.

So we’re gonna work on a plan on a page for the funnel itself, really simple funnel, and then a plan on a page for actually going to these events and activating others. I’ve seen people go to events and hang out by themselves or they attach themselves to one person and spend their time with that one person and it’s like you are how much did you spend to be here? Like all in hotel, travel, the actual event itself, lunch, dinners, everything you’re going to do, how much are you spending to sit here and attach yourself to one person? We do not wanna do that.

You gotta force yourself to be social.

Tip.

I’ve said this before in Coffee School Pro.

Bring DayQuil with you. DayQuil is like a legal drug to get a little bit of a a little bit of a perk going on. If you’re feeling well and you just want a little bit extra, I swear by it. DayQuil.

I take it whenever I go to an event and it keeps me alert and not shrinking into myself which is important. This is going to tack on to your appointment booking funnel or your workshop funnel. So if you’re new go back watch our past sessions on appointment booking funnels and workshop funnels. That was a few months ago.

If you’re in if you don’t know where that is, right in the workbook today on page twenty is where you can find that. So pop on in there. There’s a link right to it, your appointment booking funnel, and the workbook that has all three funnels that are attached to each other in it. So this is just gonna be one more way into that funnel that you’ve already set up.

Okay. So let’s talk. I’m gonna share my screen now so we can be on the same page quite literally, and then we will, of course, do the usual after this where we’ll get into a discussion. Alright.

So right now, you should be seeing the plan on a page for a funnel.

This kicks off with you actually attending the event. So you can use the same or similar funnel if you’re the speaker at an event. It’s just gonna like how you get people into it is just gonna be a little bit different. So before we spend any resources on anything in business, No matter how much money you’re making, no matter how large or small your business is, you gotta make sure it’s it’s worth investing in. So where are you gonna be able to go? Is it within driving distance?

Because you’ve got to be realistic about getting back to do client work. Maybe you’re like, I can only go on Tuesday, Wednesday for any event, and it has to be in driving distance. If I have to fly there, that’s like a whole week off. I suck at flying, etcetera etcetera.

So think about where and really, like, get get narrow on this. Where are you willing to go to? Where do you want to go to? Do you already have a vacation planned somewhere?

Are you thinking of going to Portugal in the summer? Is there an event happening in Portugal that you could attend or even pitch speaking at as a second thing, but at least attend? And then you can piggyback off of it, and your business can then pay for that vacation, which is obviously what a lot of us do in business.

Okay. So where are you gonna do it? How big does this thing have to be? Now a lot of people are like I wanna be at like a two thousand person event.

You don’t. Two thousand person events people always they’re terrified of other people in the room. They shrink off by themselves. They sit in the same spot.

You bring one person with you and the two of you just talk the whole time, this happens all the time. Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people that is that’s an incredible event to attend. You will get to know everybody. You will go around and talk to people.

They will say oh you do that? You should go talk to that person over there. They write copy for businesses like yours or they optimize pages for businesses like yours. So what size do you want?

What what’s the size of the event?

Is it for an industry? We talk about conferences, but there are, like, trade shows that you can also go attend as well. They have little workshops you can go sit in. You can hand your card out in those too, and you can do, obviously, events.

You can attend events for people who are influencers in your space. So if their audience is also your audience and it costs six hundred dollars to attend the event, that’s really cheap biz dev if you’re good at going out and handing your card out. And then any other details you might need. Right?

So what are those key criteria? Really think through it. Not just business events in my area that you, like, ask chat g p t about, but really get narrow, and that will help you. Then you’ll know just like with your ICP, you’ll be able to identify the one or two business events that you need to go to.

You will know why you’re gonna be there, and you’ll have more motivation to do all of the work behind this. Okay. So use TrackGPT to make a short list of those events in whatever time frame it is. Know that most events happen in the spring and in the fall.

So you wanna get ahead of that if that means right now you’re planning for fall events.

What’s coming up in September, October, sometimes even into November?

And then if none of those work, then get ready for January, February, March, which is the next time, that you can expect to go to events. Alright.

The next part of this is what we’re trying to do is get to a place is Liezl here?

No. Liezl’s not here.

Liezl did this, which was great. She was with me at Business of Software a year and a half ago or something like that, and she wanted to go network. And so she flew over to chat g p not sorry. Not chat g p to a QR code generator, which is a great little tool, where you can set up a QR code for all sorts of things.

And one of those things is text me. So you can set up a QR code where you have an actual text message. If you’re in the states, this is important. Like, if people still text in the States.

I know overseas, it’s a different story.

But you can also do other things. I don’t think you do WhatsApp with QR code generated generated, but you can do other things. The point is what you’re trying to do, and if you’re not clear on what I’m talking about, head over to QR code generator, take a look around, start a free account, and you can put in a text that’s like, hey. I just met you at this event or whatever.

And then you show your QR code to a person you meet, they then go tap it. And now you’re texting with that person, which is really good for a lot of reasons.

Once you oh, it does. That’s awesome for WhatsApp. That’s cool.

Once you went once you sorry. I’m reading through some of these things, then I’m getting distracted. My bad. I’ll focus instead.

Once you do set up, texting with somebody, that means you now have the ability to text them and say, hey. What are you doing for lunch? A few of us are getting together and going here or if they’re like, oh, I’m going with this person for lunch, then you can just, like, invite yourself along. That’s totally normal.

Totally fine. It’s a networking event. You’re supposed to do this stuff. So if you can get the people you meet not just to like email you but text you then right out of the gate now you’re chatting with them.

Again, you don’t wanna just attach yourself to that one person but if you do this with six, seven, eight different people, now you’ve got a group of eight people plus the people they’re meeting, and that’s a really nice way to book lunches, dinners, breakfast the next morning, whatever it might be where you can get together and start talking and networking, on a smaller scale with people who might actually be a good fit. You’ll also know pretty quickly if they’re not a good fit. If you don’t wanna give somebody your little QR code to text you, you probably don’t wanna work with that person at all.

Push your push yourself, of course, but keep that in mind. So you wanna have a QR code generator account and Pipedream.

Pipedream is newer. I’ve only been using it a very, very short period of time. So I’m saying use Pipedream because it’s it’s sort of like Zapier in that it takes but it it it’s smarter in a lot of ways than Zapier. Zapier is typically a little bit clunky, doesn’t have all of these great integrations, available. You would think it would because it’s huge.

But Pipe Dream is is cool. So look into it. Again, as part of this is your project for the summer, go check out QR code generator, see what it can do. Go check out Pipe Dream. And then when you’re in QR code generator, of course, as I say here, craft an SMS or an email QR code. Again, I recommend SMS.

Download that thing or put it on your phone, whatever.

In this case, I’m recommending that you do a printed card. It doesn’t have to be a business card size, although it could be. We can get into that. What you’re gonna wanna do is use Pipe Dreams so that anybody who sends you that SMS, like, message, any new contact you have there, gets added to your automations, which for for the workshop funnel or the appointment booking funnel.

Now if you have two different QR codes, one for people who are kind of like maybe you’re not sure they’re a good fit, and one where you’re like, fuck. I need to get this person on the phone. Like, I need to work with this person. I can’t live talking to the CMO of this company I’ve been in love with for years.

One might go into workshop funnel. One might go into appointment booking funnel. If you have those in digital form on your phone, then you can, like, choose pretty elegantly which one to show a person, like, oh, here. But if not, then fine. Just print it off. But the point is they will be texting you first, then you use Pipe Dream to send them into an automation that already exists. One of your funnels you already have to bring MQLs and move them to SQL.

Create and print those business cards with the QR code on them. That is what I recommend because digital, although good, is is tricky. And a person can just take a picture of your card and say, oh, actually I’m paperless. I’m just gonna take a picture of it. Cool. Amazing. Good.

But those who aren’t, they now have your card and that is a rare commodity today. It is so rare to hold on to a piece of paper that somebody gave you, that it can be a nice differentiator especially since you’ve got a digital interaction right there onto this QR code. Alright. Obviously, you’ll also need to book those events and make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date. We’ve talked a lot about LinkedIn through Copy School Pro.

So you are probably in good shape with that. We’re not gonna spend too long on that. Does anybody have any questions about this part of the IRL funnel?

It’s pretty straightforward. Just gotta do the stuff. Right?

And then we have the side which is activating others.

So if you’re going to do this, just like anything, if you’re gonna put your effort into it, let’s be the best at at that event. Where people are like, you wait. You haven’t talked to Jess Haney? How do you not talk to Jess?

What are you talking about? She’s right over there. There’s that huge crowd around her. What are you talking about?

That’s that’s that’s you. That’s what you’re going to be. You don’t need to, you will. You absolutely must.

Your job is to network your butt off. What are you doing there otherwise? Don’t think you’re too cool for anybody. Don’t think that person’s too cool for me. If someone’s standing alone, you go talk to them. You don’t have to, like, connect with them so deep that they, like, hook themselves onto you all the time.

But go be friendly and have ways out of conversation. So you do not want to stay in one place too long.

If you’ve already exchanged information, that’s a really good way to say, like, cool. Well, let’s text throughout this event. If you wanna, like, get together for lunch or whatever, let me know. If you’re walking alone and you wanna walk with someone, just let me know. Just text me. And that’s a good way out of a conversation.

But you wanna have ways in. You wanna have natural ways to share your business card, and then you wanna have ways out of conversations as well. And that means practicing. It does actually mean just like practicing with a friend, with your partner, with whomever it might be, with somebody here in the room.

It’s good to practice with a real person. So it’s good if you’re like if it’s your partner and they are good at giving you help in ways that you like, then cool. So what we wanna do is make sure that we’re treating this as a business experience. Right?

You’re gonna set the number the target number of contacts that you want for each event, not five. Five takes nothing. Five takes just standing there, and someone will come talk to you. Set an aggressive target here.

I want fifty contacts out of each event. It’s a two hundred person event. Okay. I’m gonna have to really rock this event.

I’m going to have to get in there and try really hard.

Not look like I’m trying hard, but try really hard. Set a target. If it’s going to be fifty people and then five of them move into your flow and you can actually turn that into something real, that’s good. That’s good ROI.

If you set a low target and, like, with conversion rates and what it takes, etcetera, etcetera, if your people actually move along, you’re gonna be like events don’t work. And they can work. They absolutely can. So set a higher target and then do the work to get them there.

Practice giving your card naturally. Practicing the things where you, like, come over and start, like, talking to somebody. Just how do you start a conversation? If this isn’t natural for you, if you find it exhausting, practice it.

Do app most events when you’re going to those, I’m sure you’ve seen, like, they’ll try to get everybody onto an app to start connecting, and people hate that but some people love it. And so if you can be a person who forces yourself to love it then you can start connecting with people before you even show up Such that when you’re walking in the door, people are like, oh, hey. We were talking on the app. Hi.

It’s so and so blah blah. And so that’s good because then out of the gate, you already feel really, like, you fit in here. It’s natural. It’s not scary.

If they have any online events like, a session leading up to the day of, which some events are starting to add in now, some online thing two or three weeks earlier to get you, like, hyped for the event event with, like, a special session, attend that on Zoom with your face on so that you can again start networking.

This is a big one that I never do, but I recommend it and people who are smart recommend it too. Print shirts with your brand on them big in different colors that you can wear them. If it’s a three day event, you need three colored shirts so that it doesn’t look like you’re wearing the same stinky shirt day after day, and also a branded hoodie or other cover up. Now that doesn’t mean you have to go and buy some shitty thing. You can get your favorite shirt, take it down to your local, like, embroiderer who probably does silk screening as well, Spend your fifty bucks to get them to do a special one so you’ve got, like, the shirt you like wearing that’s branded.

And then when you’re walking around, people see it all the time. Day after day, they see it, and that is really important for impressions.

If you’re bringing a guest or a coworker or something, same z’s for them. They need it. Try to coordinate your colors.

Do the things that leave a bigger impact for people. Plan and memorize your introduction. Obviously, that makes very good sense to do that. When I say customize for culture fit, I mean, go have some thought around that. So if you’re going to a tech event that’s filled with, like, billionaire tech people, you’re gonna have one form of introduction. If it’s filled with, like, really scrappy people who are bringing in eighty thousand dollars and, like, barely paying themselves, you’re gonna have a different introduction and how your deliberate is gonna be very different across the board. So, obviously, you wanna get that ready.

These are this is this is important stuff. You don’t wanna be there day off and go, like, where’s everybody going for lunch? Far better to be, like, oh, I know a great place near nearby to go for lunch. So if you can do that research ahead of time, even if you don’t have to put a credit card down, even book in a table for six or eight at the lunchtime that you know is going to be lunchtime. Give fifteen, twenty minutes to walk there.

But book that and you can say, like, oh, I’ve actually got we don’t have to go look for a place to eat. There’s I’ve got a reservation at a restaurant and there’s room for you. Do you wanna come with us? Ta da.

Done. Now you’ve got eight people sitting there. You’re networking. It happened because of you. People like that.

You’re more likable that way. It’s good.

Actually, develop conversation starters for table talks. It’s particularly important. If you suck at this, you can’t sit quietly. You can’t let people sit quietly.

Gotta get people talking.

If you’re at an event and there’s speakers there and speakers have books, be that nerd who brings a copy of their book, your own copy from home, and ask them to sign it. Yes. Books are heavy to carry and your carry on’s gonna be heavier.

True. But you’re also going to able to go talk to this person. Hopefully, you’ve read their book, at least scan it before you actually start talking to them. Ask them to sign it, and then when you’re doing it, strike up a conversation.

They like you because you brought a copy of their book from home, and there’s a card exchange. Cool. Wear your branded shirt every day. Give your card at events to every single person you meet. That is it.

Any questions?

No? Yes? Caitlin.

My dog is being so loud. I’m so sorry. So, do you ever feel like having asking them to sign a copy of your book, like, keeps you, like, little less than and, like, fangirly?

Or you know? Okay.

I wouldn’t because I know when I’m speaking and I’m speaking with people who have copies of books, they have deep anxiety that nobody’s going to ask them anything.

So they’re like, oh my gosh. Like, they’re worried there’s no one lining up for the book. They put out their stacks of books and then, like, they turn to me and go like, fuck. What if nobody takes one of these?

So if you’re that person True. Yeah.

Like Okay.

The nerdy student or the teacher at the front of the room is like, no one’s gonna ask a question. Oh my gosh. No one’s gonna ask a question. How am I gonna run this session?

No one’s asking a question. If you put up your hand, they love you now. Right? And that’s the same thing here.

So I wouldn’t worry about it, especially since you’re talking naturally with them. If they’re a jerk who wrote a book for ego purposes, you can’t help that. But if they’re just somebody who’s like, I wrote this book. I put my whole life into it.

Will somebody please say they like it, and you’re that person, they’ll probably wanna have lunch with you.

Okay. True. Okay. Cool. Gotcha.

Thank you. And I love these ideas. These are I a lot of these, I did not think of at all. So Oh, good. This is awesome.

Okay. Wicked. Anybody else? Jess.

Yeah. So many of these I didn’t even think about, like, wearing a branded shirt. That makes so much sense.

Yeah. I gotcha.

So, yeah, so good. Yeah. In terms of, like, natural conversation starters, do they have to be business related, or could you be like, so where did you fly in from and, like, things like that and just connect human to human?

Yeah. I mean, then that’s that’s normal. Right? Like, I what I’m recommending is that you go there. You do a little work on, like, what do smart people say is the best way to start an interesting conversation? Not small talk, but, like, interesting. Roxanna, do you have a thought on that?

I have several. I have actually, I have extra questions about it.

Oh, okay. So we’ll follow-up. Do you have a thought on how to start those conversations?

So, I was actually preparing to ask because, you know, there’s something really great about the insights you’re giving. It’s like you’re looking at all the pain points that people could have when attending a conference and all the starters you have, all the pointers there are addressing one of those issues. So I think it’s a a terrific thing that you are here and you speak at these big events. So I think it would be great if we could just sacrifice five minutes to question you.

Oh, okay. Yeah. We absolutely can. Sure. So I just wanna make sure we’re tackling Jess’s question.

Yeah. Because because that’s I I actually think it refers to Jess’s question.

Oh, okay. But I can wait. You know?

Okay. Let’s just pause just for a second. We’ll just, like, come right back to that then, Roxanna, if because it relates. I just wanna make sure if anybody has any insights into, like has anybody ever asked you a question and you were like, you’re awesome.

Like and because it rarely happens. Right? Where’d you fly in from? Is this your first time at the event?

What’d you think of the last speaker? Those are normal. Right? And you’ll ask that easily.

So I’m recommending that. I don’t know what the way in is. I think sometimes you just look at somebody and you, like, wanna talk to them about something, but that’s that’s not good preparation. That’s, like, hope.

Right? Like, hopefully, I see somebody and know what to say. So how can we prepare? And I would say, Jess, I would go look into it.

What are some, like, good conversation starters that aren’t, like, wrong?

Or, like, too personal or anything. Okay? Okay. Cool. Cool.

Roxanna, did you wanna add anything there then?

I have one case study comparison. It might not be perfect. I actually wrote a long piece about it, and I initially introduced the reference to the conversion copywriting. I think that’s going right back in there.

You see? Because when you go to an opt in page and if the conversation is successful is you’re always asking what was going on in your life that brought you to do x. So for a longer for the longest time, I well, I exaggerate. But for quite a while, I interviewed Ukrainian mothers as they were crossing the borders, you know, leaving the war stricken place to cross into Romania and then some other countries.

And I was always given a very little amount of time to write their story, at times just twenty minutes, maybe thirty tops. So I had to get the story really quickly. So I would never say, how are you? Or just I would never go for that.

Instead and I would just as soon as they sat down, I would say, when what was going on where you were when you left?

I what was the thought that crossed your mind as you left your house for the what was what were you thinking then? What did you what did you do then? So it it has to it’s a reverse of the Spielberg.

Oh, you know, like, if you’re familiar with Marie Forleo’s whatever because she’s like and, of course, copywriters have way more enhanced versions of that. But, basically, I’m asking her to paint a picture, and I never ask about her feelings.

I only ask about the feelings at the very end. Mhmm. Plus I might not nail it, and then I take it in a very wrong direction.

Mhmm. One of the best things that I have always got great stories with is what did you hope to happen that did not happen? And that’s where kids say it was my birthday, and we were gonna go to the mall. And it happened and they start crying or things like you know?

So, I my my one question for Joe is, what would you hope someone would ask you when you’re talking and he never gets asked? Or when he does, you’re like, oh my god. Wow. And here, when Jerry Seinfeld launched his movie on Netflix the other year, I actually made a point of case studying all his interviews.

And pretty much everybody I I promise you the campaign was better than the movie itself, although the movie is quite entertaining.

So and everybody was pretty much asking the same questions. And only once did I heard him hear him say, my guru incarnate, whatever, Jerry Seinfeld, the one who always said, well, that’s a onesie. I’ve never heard that one before. And the question was, if you were not Jerry Seinfeld, what were you going to do or what were you going to ask this whatever? You know? And that’s why it was like, oh, wow.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

So so I definitely think that we need to write a killer opt in about icebreakers at conversations because everybody’s going to want that.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And we’re going to need to run up our voice of customer. So yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. That’s it’s an interesting question. How do what?

People are there to network and think and process what they’re learning.

When I think about what question I’d wanna be asked, I’m like, hey, Jill. Can I bring you a coffee? That sounds like I feel like Yeah. Yes. Let’s go get a coffee together.

That’s funny. I yeah.

It’s worth thinking about worth thinking about.

If you accept coffee from anyone. You see, when I go to all these Aikido events and they’re, like, these big Japanese masters, blah blah blah. Yeah. Everybody’s so intimidated.

Oh my god. Sensei. La la. Sensei this and then say that. And then if I can establish, like, a humane connection with that person in my mind, I will just go and say, how are you today?

And then you get the most striking of responses like, my shoulder hurts.

Or Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Because the truth is, most often, I find that we just go and say stuff at them, you know, and it’s never a conversation.

Whereas it’s like it’s very easy for them to like, yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. They’re not really engaged.

But I come to think of the things that I want to ask you if I actually had five minutes with you. I mean, that’s the thing is, you know? I mean Yeah. That’s where were you where were you in your life when you thought of the word conversion and you thought, oh my god.

It’s going to be conversion copywriting?

And what were the other runner ups?

That’s funny.

No. Everything’s a fluke.

Everything just happened fluky.

Awesome. Thanks, Roxanna.

Yeah. That’s cool. I love I love that as, like, let’s think about that person and a way into the conversation with them.

Amazing.

Nikki?

Hello. Hello.

Just, like, on all this stuff of, like, the, you know, being prepared to work and all that, like, I’m just thinking, like, we just kinda have to be actresses, like, just for actors.

Just like we’re doing this. We might not feel comfortable. We gotta like, I don’t know. I’m I I run, like, the events for my synagogue, and I’ve always been handing off the MC stuff.

Like, no. I’m not doing it. No. I’m not doing it. No. I’m not doing it.

And no one else is doing a good job. And I’m like, why am I not doing it? I’m like, I am going to just do it. And, like, I’m just gonna be someone else for the moment.

And it’s like Yeah.

Good practice. And, like, okay.

So, like, it’s scary, and this is not actually us for, like, the motivation to, like, to be to have to move.

It’s so cool. It’s like, okay. Just step into that role and just just play.

Like Yeah.

It’s cool.

I was wondering, if we are getting the SMS thing with the QR code Mhmm.

Did I freeze?

Nope. You’re good. I think that froze.

K. I’m just gonna turn you off camera.

That might help.

Okay. We’re gonna come back to Nikki when her Internet kicks in again. Britney.

I guess I just wanted to say that the networking thing for me has probably been my most successful strategy this year.

So speaking in front of groups of, like, fifty, that’s where I’m like, people are asking to work with me, and then where my conversion is dying is I don’t have a clear offer to be like, I do this and this because I’ve been in exploration phase. So, like, my only goal right now is to really be like, here is what I can do for you because I have people being, like, let’s work together.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

And then it kind of surprised me because I’m passionate about messaging and copywriting, but where I’m finding my people are at real estate events. Right? So they there aren’t any copywriters at these events, and there’s actually not a lot of women either. And so I kind of like juxtaposing somewhere unexpected, or, like, utility management companies, like, mostly men, mostly engineers.

And then you come in with a little bit of a different perspective. And even I’m at the table with the CEO, while someone boring is speaking, and I’m looking up his website. And then I can ask an educated question like, hey. Like, I noticed this was on your home page. Like, was that purposeful? You know?

So I’m just saying, like, testimonial that the person to person connection. Like, people are overwhelmed with the digital world. They do, like, a memorable experience.

And then just as, like, a tip, I’ve really liked Vanessa Edwards’ book, Cues, and she says that charisma is warmth plus competence.

So when you go into a group, you have to be queuing to them. I’m open. I’m interested.

I’m warm. I’m competent. And then she sort of talks about how how you can do that. She has a whole list of questions that sort of open those doors.

It’s queues, like c u e s?

Yep. And she says we’re always queuing. So your body position, the tone of your voice, your eye contact, the competence with which you deliver your information.

How do you keep the people in a group while speaking, while networking that you are warm and competent?

K. Sounds like a great book to read. Awesome. I love that. And Alter Ego is another one, another book that’s a good read on the subject on on the subject of pushing yourself to be someone else that you’re not.

But excellent. Okay.

Yeah.

I wanna talk to you later, Britney, about how things are going there. Yeah. We gotta catch up.

Yeah. Awesome.

Okay. Cool. Any other questions or thoughts on IRL funnels?

We good?

Okay. Excellent.

If this is a thing you’re working on this summer, get started, plan out your next few weeks to get that work underway. And if you haven’t thought about it, now is a good time to think about it. Even if you don’t do it now, you could start putting the pieces in motion so that if you decide next spring you’re going to go to events, you already have plans in place for all of that, in case fall isn’t gonna work for you. Alright.

Worksheet

Summer of Big Things

Worksheet

Summer of Big Things

 

Transcript

Welcome. I know people are still filing in.

But today is our kickoff for the summer of big things where today, every week,

we’re gonna focus on just one thing that a person might be working on.

So if it’s not a thing you’re working on now, you might work on it later. Still a good use of your time. If you, however, don’t have a question today and you are not planning on doing anything with today’s subject, which is having an IRL funnel. Basically, what happens when you’re in real life with a person and you could be connected with them. You could turn them into a client or at least somebody could workshop with, partner with something.

If you don’t leave your house, if that’s not a thing you ever plan on doing then and you don’t have a question then you can take an hour back. Go work on your business instead of spending time here.

Otherwise, if you have a question or you just wanna be here around people and you’re like, I might not have a question, but someone else will have a question and I’m gonna catch something good out of that. Cool. Not trying to ask anybody to leave, but if you’re busy, work comes, absolutely first.

Awesome. Alright. So today, we are talking about your IRL funnel. What is that? That is just as I mentioned, it’s the thing that you have set up for when you are going out into the world and actually talking to people.

So Jess Haney, I know this is something that you are doing actively and others hopefully will too, because getting out there, networking, and even if you’re not speaking on a stage, which this funnel today isn’t about. It’s not like, hey. I’m getting on stage, and I need to know what to do. That can work with what we’re talking about today, but it’s like a different thing, and we can talk about that more.

And we will talk about that, I think, later this month, when we’re talking about getting invited onto stages, not to podcasts.

That happens, yes, in oh, yeah. Next Monday. Perfect.

So it’ll piggyback well off this. So this is hey. I’m going to an event. It’s a trade show for people in my industry.

I know Sarah and I were at an event in New York a couple weeks ago for something unrelated, but it was still for business.

We were looking around going like why don’t we have copy hackers cards that we’re just like throwing on every table like everybody here needs what we do.

So it’s good to be ready for those moments. Right? And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. So something to think about as, you know, if you’re like, you know, I don’t think I’m going to do IRL stuff. One, if you don’t like leaving your house, that’s fair.

I get it. A lot of us are introverts and some of us, though, are, like, kind of both. Right? Like, you think you’re an introvert, it feels safe there, but when you’re out in public, you actually perform pretty well.

It’s just exhausting for you, which is how I feel about it. So it can be good to force yourself out there because there’s a lot of good stuff that comes of it. But as part of the discussion that we’re going to have and what I want you to think about as you’re resisting the idea maybe of going and doing in real life IRL networking, Why aren’t you doing this? What’s stopping you other than maybe even like lightweight crap?

Like, not heavy stuff, like, you might feel safer being in your house. There’s less risk that you’ll interact with somebody and not want to and have awkward conversations or be forced to make small talk and then learn how to make small talk that doesn’t suck. But like if if it’s just a small thing holding you back, if it’s not like a significant thing, then maybe it’s time to think about getting out there, getting out of your space particularly since real people are out there networking. People who are serious about their business typically go out and want to meet other people in order to, like, get insights and help grow their business.

So, there’s a lot to be said for being that person in the room who is the copywriter in the room of business people.

So for food for thought is if your business development efforts don’t include attending events with prospective clients, why not? For real, why not? Really ask yourself that. Ask each other that.

And, of course, they’re not perfect for everybody, but who are they right for? If not you, who do you think these events are right for? Who goes there and does so successfully?

Are other copywriters already going? If not, why not? If so, why? And are they maybe eating up some of the business that you could and should have?

And I say copywriters and I I I mean everybody in the room whether you’re a copywriter or not. Okay. So if you’re in our workbook, we are currently on page nineteen. I will share my screen, but I don’t wanna spend too much time screen sharing.

Just go to the workbook. It’s called CSP summer twenty twenty five. Big things plus q three goal setting. We’re in the first month of this two month phase.

Plan on a page for a funnel is what we’re going to talk about. Again, lightly.

If you are doing this, what I’m talking about today, if this is your big thing for the summer, I don’t expect that you’ll set it all up today. So most of the time when we’re working on, like, workbooks for the week, you could do the thing same day. Like, you could block out three hours and get it done. This is a bigger thing that’s gonna take some more time.

Not a ton of time, but it’s a good thing to chip away at over the course of the next month, six weeks, seven weeks, maybe don’t leave it for eight weeks. That’s probably taking a little too long with the thing just because you have eight weeks doesn’t mean you have to expand the work to the size of eight weeks. You could get it done in very few hours. Okay.

So we’re gonna work on a plan on a page for the funnel itself, really simple funnel, and then a plan on a page for actually going to these events and activating others. I’ve seen people go to events and hang out by themselves or they attach themselves to one person and spend their time with that one person and it’s like you are how much did you spend to be here? Like all in hotel, travel, the actual event itself, lunch, dinners, everything you’re going to do, how much are you spending to sit here and attach yourself to one person? We do not wanna do that.

You gotta force yourself to be social.

Tip.

I’ve said this before in Coffee School Pro.

Bring DayQuil with you. DayQuil is like a legal drug to get a little bit of a a little bit of a perk going on. If you’re feeling well and you just want a little bit extra, I swear by it. DayQuil.

I take it whenever I go to an event and it keeps me alert and not shrinking into myself which is important. This is going to tack on to your appointment booking funnel or your workshop funnel. So if you’re new go back watch our past sessions on appointment booking funnels and workshop funnels. That was a few months ago.

If you’re in if you don’t know where that is, right in the workbook today on page twenty is where you can find that. So pop on in there. There’s a link right to it, your appointment booking funnel, and the workbook that has all three funnels that are attached to each other in it. So this is just gonna be one more way into that funnel that you’ve already set up.

Okay. So let’s talk. I’m gonna share my screen now so we can be on the same page quite literally, and then we will, of course, do the usual after this where we’ll get into a discussion. Alright.

So right now, you should be seeing the plan on a page for a funnel.

This kicks off with you actually attending the event. So you can use the same or similar funnel if you’re the speaker at an event. It’s just gonna like how you get people into it is just gonna be a little bit different. So before we spend any resources on anything in business, No matter how much money you’re making, no matter how large or small your business is, you gotta make sure it’s it’s worth investing in. So where are you gonna be able to go? Is it within driving distance?

Because you’ve got to be realistic about getting back to do client work. Maybe you’re like, I can only go on Tuesday, Wednesday for any event, and it has to be in driving distance. If I have to fly there, that’s like a whole week off. I suck at flying, etcetera etcetera.

So think about where and really, like, get get narrow on this. Where are you willing to go to? Where do you want to go to? Do you already have a vacation planned somewhere?

Are you thinking of going to Portugal in the summer? Is there an event happening in Portugal that you could attend or even pitch speaking at as a second thing, but at least attend? And then you can piggyback off of it, and your business can then pay for that vacation, which is obviously what a lot of us do in business.

Okay. So where are you gonna do it? How big does this thing have to be? Now a lot of people are like I wanna be at like a two thousand person event.

You don’t. Two thousand person events people always they’re terrified of other people in the room. They shrink off by themselves. They sit in the same spot.

You bring one person with you and the two of you just talk the whole time, this happens all the time. Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people that is that’s an incredible event to attend. You will get to know everybody. You will go around and talk to people.

They will say oh you do that? You should go talk to that person over there. They write copy for businesses like yours or they optimize pages for businesses like yours. So what size do you want?

What what’s the size of the event?

Is it for an industry? We talk about conferences, but there are, like, trade shows that you can also go attend as well. They have little workshops you can go sit in. You can hand your card out in those too, and you can do, obviously, events.

You can attend events for people who are influencers in your space. So if their audience is also your audience and it costs six hundred dollars to attend the event, that’s really cheap biz dev if you’re good at going out and handing your card out. And then any other details you might need. Right?

So what are those key criteria? Really think through it. Not just business events in my area that you, like, ask chat g p t about, but really get narrow, and that will help you. Then you’ll know just like with your ICP, you’ll be able to identify the one or two business events that you need to go to.

You will know why you’re gonna be there, and you’ll have more motivation to do all of the work behind this. Okay. So use TrackGPT to make a short list of those events in whatever time frame it is. Know that most events happen in the spring and in the fall.

So you wanna get ahead of that if that means right now you’re planning for fall events.

What’s coming up in September, October, sometimes even into November?

And then if none of those work, then get ready for January, February, March, which is the next time, that you can expect to go to events. Alright.

The next part of this is what we’re trying to do is get to a place is Liezl here?

No. Liezl’s not here.

Liezl did this, which was great. She was with me at Business of Software a year and a half ago or something like that, and she wanted to go network. And so she flew over to chat g p not sorry. Not chat g p to a QR code generator, which is a great little tool, where you can set up a QR code for all sorts of things.

And one of those things is text me. So you can set up a QR code where you have an actual text message. If you’re in the states, this is important. Like, if people still text in the States.

I know overseas, it’s a different story.

But you can also do other things. I don’t think you do WhatsApp with QR code generated generated, but you can do other things. The point is what you’re trying to do, and if you’re not clear on what I’m talking about, head over to QR code generator, take a look around, start a free account, and you can put in a text that’s like, hey. I just met you at this event or whatever.

And then you show your QR code to a person you meet, they then go tap it. And now you’re texting with that person, which is really good for a lot of reasons.

Once you oh, it does. That’s awesome for WhatsApp. That’s cool.

Once you went once you sorry. I’m reading through some of these things, then I’m getting distracted. My bad. I’ll focus instead.

Once you do set up, texting with somebody, that means you now have the ability to text them and say, hey. What are you doing for lunch? A few of us are getting together and going here or if they’re like, oh, I’m going with this person for lunch, then you can just, like, invite yourself along. That’s totally normal.

Totally fine. It’s a networking event. You’re supposed to do this stuff. So if you can get the people you meet not just to like email you but text you then right out of the gate now you’re chatting with them.

Again, you don’t wanna just attach yourself to that one person but if you do this with six, seven, eight different people, now you’ve got a group of eight people plus the people they’re meeting, and that’s a really nice way to book lunches, dinners, breakfast the next morning, whatever it might be where you can get together and start talking and networking, on a smaller scale with people who might actually be a good fit. You’ll also know pretty quickly if they’re not a good fit. If you don’t wanna give somebody your little QR code to text you, you probably don’t wanna work with that person at all.

Push your push yourself, of course, but keep that in mind. So you wanna have a QR code generator account and Pipedream.

Pipedream is newer. I’ve only been using it a very, very short period of time. So I’m saying use Pipedream because it’s it’s sort of like Zapier in that it takes but it it it’s smarter in a lot of ways than Zapier. Zapier is typically a little bit clunky, doesn’t have all of these great integrations, available. You would think it would because it’s huge.

But Pipe Dream is is cool. So look into it. Again, as part of this is your project for the summer, go check out QR code generator, see what it can do. Go check out Pipe Dream. And then when you’re in QR code generator, of course, as I say here, craft an SMS or an email QR code. Again, I recommend SMS.

Download that thing or put it on your phone, whatever.

In this case, I’m recommending that you do a printed card. It doesn’t have to be a business card size, although it could be. We can get into that. What you’re gonna wanna do is use Pipe Dreams so that anybody who sends you that SMS, like, message, any new contact you have there, gets added to your automations, which for for the workshop funnel or the appointment booking funnel.

Now if you have two different QR codes, one for people who are kind of like maybe you’re not sure they’re a good fit, and one where you’re like, fuck. I need to get this person on the phone. Like, I need to work with this person. I can’t live talking to the CMO of this company I’ve been in love with for years.

One might go into workshop funnel. One might go into appointment booking funnel. If you have those in digital form on your phone, then you can, like, choose pretty elegantly which one to show a person, like, oh, here. But if not, then fine. Just print it off. But the point is they will be texting you first, then you use Pipe Dream to send them into an automation that already exists. One of your funnels you already have to bring MQLs and move them to SQL.

Create and print those business cards with the QR code on them. That is what I recommend because digital, although good, is is tricky. And a person can just take a picture of your card and say, oh, actually I’m paperless. I’m just gonna take a picture of it. Cool. Amazing. Good.

But those who aren’t, they now have your card and that is a rare commodity today. It is so rare to hold on to a piece of paper that somebody gave you, that it can be a nice differentiator especially since you’ve got a digital interaction right there onto this QR code. Alright. Obviously, you’ll also need to book those events and make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date. We’ve talked a lot about LinkedIn through Copy School Pro.

So you are probably in good shape with that. We’re not gonna spend too long on that. Does anybody have any questions about this part of the IRL funnel?

It’s pretty straightforward. Just gotta do the stuff. Right?

And then we have the side which is activating others.

So if you’re going to do this, just like anything, if you’re gonna put your effort into it, let’s be the best at at that event. Where people are like, you wait. You haven’t talked to Jess Haney? How do you not talk to Jess?

What are you talking about? She’s right over there. There’s that huge crowd around her. What are you talking about?

That’s that’s that’s you. That’s what you’re going to be. You don’t need to, you will. You absolutely must.

Your job is to network your butt off. What are you doing there otherwise? Don’t think you’re too cool for anybody. Don’t think that person’s too cool for me. If someone’s standing alone, you go talk to them. You don’t have to, like, connect with them so deep that they, like, hook themselves onto you all the time.

But go be friendly and have ways out of conversation. So you do not want to stay in one place too long.

If you’ve already exchanged information, that’s a really good way to say, like, cool. Well, let’s text throughout this event. If you wanna, like, get together for lunch or whatever, let me know. If you’re walking alone and you wanna walk with someone, just let me know. Just text me. And that’s a good way out of a conversation.

But you wanna have ways in. You wanna have natural ways to share your business card, and then you wanna have ways out of conversations as well. And that means practicing. It does actually mean just like practicing with a friend, with your partner, with whomever it might be, with somebody here in the room.

It’s good to practice with a real person. So it’s good if you’re like if it’s your partner and they are good at giving you help in ways that you like, then cool. So what we wanna do is make sure that we’re treating this as a business experience. Right?

You’re gonna set the number the target number of contacts that you want for each event, not five. Five takes nothing. Five takes just standing there, and someone will come talk to you. Set an aggressive target here.

I want fifty contacts out of each event. It’s a two hundred person event. Okay. I’m gonna have to really rock this event.

I’m going to have to get in there and try really hard.

Not look like I’m trying hard, but try really hard. Set a target. If it’s going to be fifty people and then five of them move into your flow and you can actually turn that into something real, that’s good. That’s good ROI.

If you set a low target and, like, with conversion rates and what it takes, etcetera, etcetera, if your people actually move along, you’re gonna be like events don’t work. And they can work. They absolutely can. So set a higher target and then do the work to get them there.

Practice giving your card naturally. Practicing the things where you, like, come over and start, like, talking to somebody. Just how do you start a conversation? If this isn’t natural for you, if you find it exhausting, practice it.

Do app most events when you’re going to those, I’m sure you’ve seen, like, they’ll try to get everybody onto an app to start connecting, and people hate that but some people love it. And so if you can be a person who forces yourself to love it then you can start connecting with people before you even show up Such that when you’re walking in the door, people are like, oh, hey. We were talking on the app. Hi.

It’s so and so blah blah. And so that’s good because then out of the gate, you already feel really, like, you fit in here. It’s natural. It’s not scary.

If they have any online events like, a session leading up to the day of, which some events are starting to add in now, some online thing two or three weeks earlier to get you, like, hyped for the event event with, like, a special session, attend that on Zoom with your face on so that you can again start networking.

This is a big one that I never do, but I recommend it and people who are smart recommend it too. Print shirts with your brand on them big in different colors that you can wear them. If it’s a three day event, you need three colored shirts so that it doesn’t look like you’re wearing the same stinky shirt day after day, and also a branded hoodie or other cover up. Now that doesn’t mean you have to go and buy some shitty thing. You can get your favorite shirt, take it down to your local, like, embroiderer who probably does silk screening as well, Spend your fifty bucks to get them to do a special one so you’ve got, like, the shirt you like wearing that’s branded.

And then when you’re walking around, people see it all the time. Day after day, they see it, and that is really important for impressions.

If you’re bringing a guest or a coworker or something, same z’s for them. They need it. Try to coordinate your colors.

Do the things that leave a bigger impact for people. Plan and memorize your introduction. Obviously, that makes very good sense to do that. When I say customize for culture fit, I mean, go have some thought around that. So if you’re going to a tech event that’s filled with, like, billionaire tech people, you’re gonna have one form of introduction. If it’s filled with, like, really scrappy people who are bringing in eighty thousand dollars and, like, barely paying themselves, you’re gonna have a different introduction and how your deliberate is gonna be very different across the board. So, obviously, you wanna get that ready.

These are this is this is important stuff. You don’t wanna be there day off and go, like, where’s everybody going for lunch? Far better to be, like, oh, I know a great place near nearby to go for lunch. So if you can do that research ahead of time, even if you don’t have to put a credit card down, even book in a table for six or eight at the lunchtime that you know is going to be lunchtime. Give fifteen, twenty minutes to walk there.

But book that and you can say, like, oh, I’ve actually got we don’t have to go look for a place to eat. There’s I’ve got a reservation at a restaurant and there’s room for you. Do you wanna come with us? Ta da.

Done. Now you’ve got eight people sitting there. You’re networking. It happened because of you. People like that.

You’re more likable that way. It’s good.

Actually, develop conversation starters for table talks. It’s particularly important. If you suck at this, you can’t sit quietly. You can’t let people sit quietly.

Gotta get people talking.

If you’re at an event and there’s speakers there and speakers have books, be that nerd who brings a copy of their book, your own copy from home, and ask them to sign it. Yes. Books are heavy to carry and your carry on’s gonna be heavier.

True. But you’re also going to able to go talk to this person. Hopefully, you’ve read their book, at least scan it before you actually start talking to them. Ask them to sign it, and then when you’re doing it, strike up a conversation.

They like you because you brought a copy of their book from home, and there’s a card exchange. Cool. Wear your branded shirt every day. Give your card at events to every single person you meet. That is it.

Any questions?

No? Yes? Caitlin.

My dog is being so loud. I’m so sorry. So, do you ever feel like having asking them to sign a copy of your book, like, keeps you, like, little less than and, like, fangirly?

Or you know? Okay.

I wouldn’t because I know when I’m speaking and I’m speaking with people who have copies of books, they have deep anxiety that nobody’s going to ask them anything.

So they’re like, oh my gosh. Like, they’re worried there’s no one lining up for the book. They put out their stacks of books and then, like, they turn to me and go like, fuck. What if nobody takes one of these?

So if you’re that person True. Yeah.

Like Okay.

The nerdy student or the teacher at the front of the room is like, no one’s gonna ask a question. Oh my gosh. No one’s gonna ask a question. How am I gonna run this session?

No one’s asking a question. If you put up your hand, they love you now. Right? And that’s the same thing here.

So I wouldn’t worry about it, especially since you’re talking naturally with them. If they’re a jerk who wrote a book for ego purposes, you can’t help that. But if they’re just somebody who’s like, I wrote this book. I put my whole life into it.

Will somebody please say they like it, and you’re that person, they’ll probably wanna have lunch with you.

Okay. True. Okay. Cool. Gotcha.

Thank you. And I love these ideas. These are I a lot of these, I did not think of at all. So Oh, good. This is awesome.

Okay. Wicked. Anybody else? Jess.

Yeah. So many of these I didn’t even think about, like, wearing a branded shirt. That makes so much sense.

Yeah. I gotcha.

So, yeah, so good. Yeah. In terms of, like, natural conversation starters, do they have to be business related, or could you be like, so where did you fly in from and, like, things like that and just connect human to human?

Yeah. I mean, then that’s that’s normal. Right? Like, I what I’m recommending is that you go there. You do a little work on, like, what do smart people say is the best way to start an interesting conversation? Not small talk, but, like, interesting. Roxanna, do you have a thought on that?

I have several. I have actually, I have extra questions about it.

Oh, okay. So we’ll follow-up. Do you have a thought on how to start those conversations?

So, I was actually preparing to ask because, you know, there’s something really great about the insights you’re giving. It’s like you’re looking at all the pain points that people could have when attending a conference and all the starters you have, all the pointers there are addressing one of those issues. So I think it’s a a terrific thing that you are here and you speak at these big events. So I think it would be great if we could just sacrifice five minutes to question you.

Oh, okay. Yeah. We absolutely can. Sure. So I just wanna make sure we’re tackling Jess’s question.

Yeah. Because because that’s I I actually think it refers to Jess’s question.

Oh, okay. But I can wait. You know?

Okay. Let’s just pause just for a second. We’ll just, like, come right back to that then, Roxanna, if because it relates. I just wanna make sure if anybody has any insights into, like has anybody ever asked you a question and you were like, you’re awesome.

Like and because it rarely happens. Right? Where’d you fly in from? Is this your first time at the event?

What’d you think of the last speaker? Those are normal. Right? And you’ll ask that easily.

So I’m recommending that. I don’t know what the way in is. I think sometimes you just look at somebody and you, like, wanna talk to them about something, but that’s that’s not good preparation. That’s, like, hope.

Right? Like, hopefully, I see somebody and know what to say. So how can we prepare? And I would say, Jess, I would go look into it.

What are some, like, good conversation starters that aren’t, like, wrong?

Or, like, too personal or anything. Okay? Okay. Cool. Cool.

Roxanna, did you wanna add anything there then?

I have one case study comparison. It might not be perfect. I actually wrote a long piece about it, and I initially introduced the reference to the conversion copywriting. I think that’s going right back in there.

You see? Because when you go to an opt in page and if the conversation is successful is you’re always asking what was going on in your life that brought you to do x. So for a longer for the longest time, I well, I exaggerate. But for quite a while, I interviewed Ukrainian mothers as they were crossing the borders, you know, leaving the war stricken place to cross into Romania and then some other countries.

And I was always given a very little amount of time to write their story, at times just twenty minutes, maybe thirty tops. So I had to get the story really quickly. So I would never say, how are you? Or just I would never go for that.

Instead and I would just as soon as they sat down, I would say, when what was going on where you were when you left?

I what was the thought that crossed your mind as you left your house for the what was what were you thinking then? What did you what did you do then? So it it has to it’s a reverse of the Spielberg.

Oh, you know, like, if you’re familiar with Marie Forleo’s whatever because she’s like and, of course, copywriters have way more enhanced versions of that. But, basically, I’m asking her to paint a picture, and I never ask about her feelings.

I only ask about the feelings at the very end. Mhmm. Plus I might not nail it, and then I take it in a very wrong direction.

Mhmm. One of the best things that I have always got great stories with is what did you hope to happen that did not happen? And that’s where kids say it was my birthday, and we were gonna go to the mall. And it happened and they start crying or things like you know?

So, I my my one question for Joe is, what would you hope someone would ask you when you’re talking and he never gets asked? Or when he does, you’re like, oh my god. Wow. And here, when Jerry Seinfeld launched his movie on Netflix the other year, I actually made a point of case studying all his interviews.

And pretty much everybody I I promise you the campaign was better than the movie itself, although the movie is quite entertaining.

So and everybody was pretty much asking the same questions. And only once did I heard him hear him say, my guru incarnate, whatever, Jerry Seinfeld, the one who always said, well, that’s a onesie. I’ve never heard that one before. And the question was, if you were not Jerry Seinfeld, what were you going to do or what were you going to ask this whatever? You know? And that’s why it was like, oh, wow.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

So so I definitely think that we need to write a killer opt in about icebreakers at conversations because everybody’s going to want that.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And we’re going to need to run up our voice of customer. So yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. That’s it’s an interesting question. How do what?

People are there to network and think and process what they’re learning.

When I think about what question I’d wanna be asked, I’m like, hey, Jill. Can I bring you a coffee? That sounds like I feel like Yeah. Yes. Let’s go get a coffee together.

That’s funny. I yeah.

It’s worth thinking about worth thinking about.

If you accept coffee from anyone. You see, when I go to all these Aikido events and they’re, like, these big Japanese masters, blah blah blah. Yeah. Everybody’s so intimidated.

Oh my god. Sensei. La la. Sensei this and then say that. And then if I can establish, like, a humane connection with that person in my mind, I will just go and say, how are you today?

And then you get the most striking of responses like, my shoulder hurts.

Or Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Because the truth is, most often, I find that we just go and say stuff at them, you know, and it’s never a conversation.

Whereas it’s like it’s very easy for them to like, yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. They’re not really engaged.

But I come to think of the things that I want to ask you if I actually had five minutes with you. I mean, that’s the thing is, you know? I mean Yeah. That’s where were you where were you in your life when you thought of the word conversion and you thought, oh my god.

It’s going to be conversion copywriting?

And what were the other runner ups?

That’s funny.

No. Everything’s a fluke.

Everything just happened fluky.

Awesome. Thanks, Roxanna.

Yeah. That’s cool. I love I love that as, like, let’s think about that person and a way into the conversation with them.

Amazing.

Nikki?

Hello. Hello.

Just, like, on all this stuff of, like, the, you know, being prepared to work and all that, like, I’m just thinking, like, we just kinda have to be actresses, like, just for actors.

Just like we’re doing this. We might not feel comfortable. We gotta like, I don’t know. I’m I I run, like, the events for my synagogue, and I’ve always been handing off the MC stuff.

Like, no. I’m not doing it. No. I’m not doing it. No. I’m not doing it.

And no one else is doing a good job. And I’m like, why am I not doing it? I’m like, I am going to just do it. And, like, I’m just gonna be someone else for the moment.

And it’s like Yeah.

Good practice. And, like, okay.

So, like, it’s scary, and this is not actually us for, like, the motivation to, like, to be to have to move.

It’s so cool. It’s like, okay. Just step into that role and just just play.

Like Yeah.

It’s cool.

I was wondering, if we are getting the SMS thing with the QR code Mhmm.

Did I freeze?

Nope. You’re good. I think that froze.

K. I’m just gonna turn you off camera.

That might help.

Okay. We’re gonna come back to Nikki when her Internet kicks in again. Britney.

I guess I just wanted to say that the networking thing for me has probably been my most successful strategy this year.

So speaking in front of groups of, like, fifty, that’s where I’m like, people are asking to work with me, and then where my conversion is dying is I don’t have a clear offer to be like, I do this and this because I’ve been in exploration phase. So, like, my only goal right now is to really be like, here is what I can do for you because I have people being, like, let’s work together.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

And then it kind of surprised me because I’m passionate about messaging and copywriting, but where I’m finding my people are at real estate events. Right? So they there aren’t any copywriters at these events, and there’s actually not a lot of women either. And so I kind of like juxtaposing somewhere unexpected, or, like, utility management companies, like, mostly men, mostly engineers.

And then you come in with a little bit of a different perspective. And even I’m at the table with the CEO, while someone boring is speaking, and I’m looking up his website. And then I can ask an educated question like, hey. Like, I noticed this was on your home page. Like, was that purposeful? You know?

So I’m just saying, like, testimonial that the person to person connection. Like, people are overwhelmed with the digital world. They do, like, a memorable experience.

And then just as, like, a tip, I’ve really liked Vanessa Edwards’ book, Cues, and she says that charisma is warmth plus competence.

So when you go into a group, you have to be queuing to them. I’m open. I’m interested.

I’m warm. I’m competent. And then she sort of talks about how how you can do that. She has a whole list of questions that sort of open those doors.

It’s queues, like c u e s?

Yep. And she says we’re always queuing. So your body position, the tone of your voice, your eye contact, the competence with which you deliver your information.

How do you keep the people in a group while speaking, while networking that you are warm and competent?

K. Sounds like a great book to read. Awesome. I love that. And Alter Ego is another one, another book that’s a good read on the subject on on the subject of pushing yourself to be someone else that you’re not.

But excellent. Okay.

Yeah.

I wanna talk to you later, Britney, about how things are going there. Yeah. We gotta catch up.

Yeah. Awesome.

Okay. Cool. Any other questions or thoughts on IRL funnels?

We good?

Okay. Excellent.

If this is a thing you’re working on this summer, get started, plan out your next few weeks to get that work underway. And if you haven’t thought about it, now is a good time to think about it. Even if you don’t do it now, you could start putting the pieces in motion so that if you decide next spring you’re going to go to events, you already have plans in place for all of that, in case fall isn’t gonna work for you. Alright.